Jeff Niemann

#34 / Pitcher / Tampa Bay Rays

Height: 6-9

Weight: 280

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Feb 28, 1983

Jeff Niemann is a big bodied pitcher (see above) who came out of Rice as a dominating prospect. His strikeout rate and reasonable walk rate for a college pitcher were very attractive, but injuries plagued him - as they tend to do with Rice pitchers.

Fast-forward to 2008, and Niemann still retains a pretty good strikeout rate in AAA (just about one per inning) and a walk rate around 3.5-4.0. The only thing keeping him from doing well in the majors is his control, which is a fairly common problem amongst large-framed pitchers like Jeff.

When I was reading Beyond the Box Score, I ran across an article on Baseball-Intellect that broke down some of the Rays prospects. When I ran across Jeff's pitching mechanics in an animated GIF, I actually recoiled in my chair at work. I stared at it for a few loops, plugged in my flash drive, and fired up a copy of Ulead GIF Animator to analyze.

Here's the animated image where each frame is a tenth of a second:

Alex said:

Mechanics are probably one thing holding Niemann back in terms of control. He has a stabbing motion with his arm, which you can see in the clips above. As he’s bringing his arm through his arm circle, Niemann kicks out and then employs a step-over move to jump start an aggressive hip rotation. When he’s not in-snyc [sic], the timing of these moves are thrown off and he experiences both a decline in velocity and command.

And so I ask, dear reader - what do you think about Niemann's mechanics? Why? Do you see what I see?

(I promise I'll talk about Aaron Cunningham's swing in the near future. Thanks for commenting on that post!)