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Scouts say that Cincinnati Reds' pitcher Homer Bailey has gone back to his old mechanics from high school and has found dominance as a result. But is it true, or are we looking at confirmation bias?

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Homer Bailey hasn't had the best of times in the MLB, despite posting very promising numbers in the minors for years. Readers will remember that I wrote a piece on his pitching mechanics and was largely negative, saying:

Homer Bailey is a textbook example of how not to throw a baseball, right up there with Anthony Reyes, B.J. Ryan, and Mark Prior.

Yikes.

So, when I was reading BaseballProspectus.com and going through their articles tonight in a bout of insomnia, I noticed that Kevin Goldstein (one of their best writers) mentioned this about the aforementioned pitcher:

After striking out a career-high 15 in his last start, Bailey was more efficient on Saturday night, delivering a seven-inning five-hit shutout against Buffalo. Much of his success can be attributed to mechanical changes, or, more accurately, his reverting to his former delivery, which puts more downward bite on both his fastball and breaking ball. There's no immediate, obvious opening in the Reds' rotation right now, but when one does arise, Bailey could finally be ready to step in and live up to his once mighty promise.

(emphasis mine)

Since I recently came into the ability to capture minor league pitcher's on video, I decided to take a look using the old video I had on file in addition to Bailey's start on May 2nd. I wanted to see if Goldstein's sources were actually correct, or if it was just confirmation bias striking as it often does in baseball analysis. Remember, pitchers do not frequently make major mechanical changes to their delivery without catastrophic injury facing them, and even then, most just go right back to how they threw a baseball to begin with, fearful that they'll lose the ability (and the paycheck that comes with it) to get hitters out.

A very interesting video comparison is after the break...

On the left is the video from Homer Bailey's file - it's from last year. On the right is the video from the start on May 2nd. The video quality is significantly worse, but I synchronized both clips to ball release - 53 frames in all.

Can you spot any changes? The only minor cosmetic change that I can spot is the fact that he starts with his hands a bit higher in the May 2nd start, but nothing else. The tempo is about the same, his arm angle is the same, his arm action still exhibits major forced abduction of the shoulder with that "scapular loading" technique, and you can see that high head finish, leaving the bill of his cap facing up. His delivery is nearly identical - right down to that odd gloveside foot "flip" after release due to his closed-off finish.

I think we can chalk this one up to scout doublespeak and/or confirmation bias. Kevin Goldstein says it's important to actually talk to scouts and to actually see a guy in real life before making a decision on him. Equally important is to validate what you hear and what you see using slow-motion video. While this exercise is not perfect, it's pretty obvious that Homer Bailey has made no discernible change in his pitching mechanics.