Lost Blueprint

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Here is a question for all Nerds running baseball.

It comes from a former pitching coach who has seen his fill of 0-2 pitches, center cut, hit for home runs and base hits.

Simple questions are the best because it leaves little wiggle room. I kept it simple throughout my career and that is why I was able to put the game in perspective. This is not rocket science.

This is baseball. Players appreciate me coming right to the point.

I would love to see every Nerd pitching guru asked this question; it does not have to be asked in an accusatory fashion, it’s not like Harry Bosch is bringing you down to the station to question you in some stark interview room. I would never want to put Nerds through that kind of pressure. Human interaction is not always a strength of those front office types, anyway.

So here goes with the question before we get to a brilliant pitching conversation with Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz.

“If all they can hit are fat mistakes,’’ wondered this longtime pitching coach and talent evaluator, “then why aren’t we teaching command?’’

What a wonderful, basic simple question from a man who has studied the art of pitching his entire career and has seen the foolishness that is passing for pitching today at both the major and minor league level.

Here is the question one more time: “If all they can hit are fat mistakes, then why aren’t we teaching command?’’

If this were the 1950s, that would be “The $64,000 Question.’’

Current generation, have AI look that up that along with Charles Van Doren and the show “Twenty-One.’’  After all, that is the way it is done nowadays.

Command works. Command has always worked.

In 2025 this is much more than the $64,000 question – it is the hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars question because pitching staffs are collapsing physically and mentally at an incredible cost. The Phillies’ Zack Wheeler just went down this week with thoracic outlet syndrome and surgery is near.

Why isn’t command taught?

Every type of spin and velocity are taught from Day 1 of bullpens and Pitch Labs.

Why not command?

Command works. Command has always worked. Command enables you to pitch to contact, keeps you healthier on the mound, and when you pitch to contact your team can make plays behind you. If you are always searching for swing and miss, where are the repetitions that make a good fielding defense – an anticipating defense behind you?

Otherwise, you get the Yankees … and so many other teams.

Where sometimes a ground ball to the shortstop with men on base arrives and fielders act as if a unicorn had just crossed their path.

“What the hell was that?’’

“What do I do now?’’

“Let me just fling it somewhere?’’

“We see it all the time,’’ our expert added, “0-2 baseballs in the strike zone that are crushed. The mindset of the game is so bad now. There is no thinking. For the most part, the hitter swings out of his ass and the pitcher is always seeking swing and miss. It is no longer about making a pitch. It is no longer about creating weak contact.

“Make a play defensively,’’ he added. “Get your team on and off the field. That used to be the pitching mindset. Now it is all swing and miss.’’

Get outs. Get your team on and off the field. Those simple things used to be the mindset of pitchers, pitching coaches and managers.

“That was the blueprint,’’ our expert said. “That was the art of pitching.’’

Then he said something profound that puts the entire, injury-prone, 0-2 home runs, six walk-outings in perspective with one other simple sentence.

“If you don’t have the blueprint, you don’t understand the blueprint.’’

Baseball brilliance right there.

Let’s repeat it one more time. Like the simple question that started this whole conversation. I want to hammer this home.

“If you don’t have the blueprint, you don’t understand the blueprint.’’

They do not have the blueprint.

The Nerds in charge: Do not want the blueprint. If you do not believe me, how about Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz?

These are three Hall of Fame pitchers who had the blueprint.

I was flipping through games Friday night and came across the Apple TV+ broadcast of the Mets and lowly Braves. The Braves were not lowly during the Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz years and their Hall of Fame manager Bobby Cox and pitching coach Leo Mazzone – and on this night, they were celebrating the 30th anniversary of the World Champion 1995 Braves at Truist Park.

These three were the blueprint of pitching success. Some numbers: the three combined for 12,894 innings pitched, 2,149 games, 873 wins, 154 saves and 218 complete games, all numbers that blow away pitchers from this generation.

This was a thought-provoking in-game interview by Wayne Randazzo, who I knew from my Mets experience, and left-hander Dontrelle Willis, who I knew from my long friendship with Jack McKeon. I also had the pleasure of talking pitching with Maddux, Smoltz and Glavine dozens of times through the years, everywhere from their respective clubhouses to Cooperstown, so I could see where this was heading.

The $64,000 question was asked by Randazzo near the end of the in-booth interview, after Willis had fired up the three about the current state of pitching.

Randazzo asked: Have you worked with any pitchers, major or minors? There was a combined laugh.

Smoltz answered first, saying, “I’ve been retired 16 years, and I’ve talked to one pitcher.’’

Glavine added: “That’s about right, I got maybe one or two.’’

“Our worlds will not collide,’’ Smoltz said.

“It’s just a different way to do it now,’’ noted Maddux, who does talk pitching to his brother Mike Maddux the Rangers’ pitching coach – and isn’t it interesting that the Rangers have the best ERA in the game at 3.43. “You teach what you know.’’

The current Braves, meanwhile, post a 4.38 ERA, only seven teams are worse.

Smoltz added, “The hardest thing, honestly, in any industry, is you go backwards to go forwards. This is the only industry you don’t go backwards to go forwards. Because when you have all the answers to the test, and they are giving you all the answers to the test, there’s no need to ask any questions. It’s sad, because we all asked our predecessors. We were like, ‘I don’t care if it was Charlie Leibrandt, we were asking. We wanted to know. We wanted to get better.’’

Not the way in these iPad days.

The gurus in charge are smarter than anyone else who has ever come before them on the baseball field. It’s the way of the baseball world in 2025.

Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz should put together an AI package and then maybe someone might listen.

They were also asked about their style of pitching, length, pitch to contact, and so forth, how are you going to get that back?

“The only way you are going to get it back,’’ Smoltz said, “is rule changes. You are never going to get it to self-correct. It’s an addictive society, when you see the velocity and the spin that these guys have. They are not going to train them to do our reward system. If you pitched, you got paid. If you didn’t, you didn’t. It’s not the same now. The reward system today is anti- what you just said, so that will never change until there is a rule change in pitching that causes you to have a philosophy change. Otherwise, they like what they are seeing.’’

Willis interjected, “I go crazy watching guys go 4-plus and be happy with that. To me, that’s unacceptable because now you have to deploy five guys. I took pride going out there and navigating the lineup three times, going into the eighth inning with the game intact even if you were losing the ballgame. I felt like I came from that mentality because you guys set the tone, you start what you finish. You are not an ace unless you throw 200 innings. You look at some of these kids now in the minor leagues and they throw 50-60 innings a year and it is like, ‘What are you really teaching them?’’

They certainly are not teaching command.

“I also think they are afraid of contact,’’ Willis smartly added. “I don’t think they pitch to contact.’’

To which Glavine noted, “I don’t think they know how. I think they are all brought up on swing and miss is all that matters, how much pitching are you going to get? I think we all feel the same way, but I don’t fault these guys – totally. It is what they have been brought up on, it is what they have been told to do. They are told to go out there and empty the tank in four or five innings and we got six guys behind you that can throw 100.’’

Not much command in those all those guys, though.

Willis chuckled and pointed out back in the day he would watch those Braves pitchers throw a bullpen the same day he threw a bullpen, and the Braves pitching coach was calmly sitting on a bucket, that’s how good their command was, they were not trying to throw the ball through a wall.

“Meanwhile, my bullpen catcher is in full gear, trying to block sliders in the dirt,’’ Willis said. “I wish they could get back to throwing the 92-mph fastball and then hump up to 97 and change eye levels and change velocity as well.’’

What used to be called pitching.

“I think we all could throw harder than what we pitched at,’’ Glavine admitted, “but in today’s game, these guys are all pitching at how hard they can throw. They don’t have that little extra when they have two strikes and trying to put a guy away, they are already there, every pitch.’’

Every pitch – even 0-2 right down Broadway.