Jordan wrote:allstar1579 wrote:I scouted Erbs pretty extensively year before last, he actually made the switch from thrower to pitcher that year. I also have my suspicions that he pitched with some variation of this injury a lot longer than people think, like more than a year.
When it started hurting him, I noticed him arm slot drop JUST a bit (warning sign one) and his velo was a good couple MPH lower than I had ever seen it through HS and low minors. He was having MORE success than he had before though because it made him really fine tune his secondaries, and he was making them work well. Not consistently, but I saw his slider be VERY nasty when it was on, and other days it would be another pitch. He kept seeming to find 2 pitches to throw any given night, but having a hard time putting all of them together at once. (it does happen though as his one-hitters will attest to)
I won't be surprised to see his velo in that same range 89-92 and touching 94, but I'm interested to see how his secondaries are holding up. Still have high hopes for the kid, he really is an all around good guy.
Makes sense. So it looks like you've seen Erbe succeed even with his fastball velocity down, which is at least an encouraging sign if he's going to be down a few ticks when he returns. Hopefully he works in the 89-92 range with the FB, really works on those secondaries and brings them to the level you saw when he was leaning on them a bit more.
Yeah, his big "breakout" season in Bowie, if you want to call it that, he was sitting there all season. The first game I covered him I had to ask around the press box to see what was wrong with him, and they all kept saying nothing, he's fine, so I asked where his other 4mph went they just kinda looked puzzled, like they had no idea he threw that hard before.
He never seemed to have all 3 of his main pitches working the same night, but he got good at figuring out what he had early and then locking it down for the rest of the game.
