Quote Originally Posted by maroonmania View Post
I would think getting sink and inducing ground balls would be a good thing no matter what ball you are using. Even with the new ball I'm not sure why our pitchers can't pitch to the lower part of the strike zone and be effective. They just have to adjust to not getting quite as much movement as in the past.
I agree with you there, in reference to it being an effect pitch any time and being able to locate. Seams doesn't effect location. But if the guy is not a power arm and his sink is dependent on spin and/or arm slot then the lack of late sink movement, because of the lower seams, will effect them in two ways. When they miss its going to be up in the zone and with little to no late movement then it's almost BP pitch. Secondly, even with them making a good location pitch the difference of just 2" less down movement changes a mishit to a base hit and also eliminates a lot of chase pitches from them. They have to throw for a strike and it stays a strike instead of the batter chasing the ball dropping out of the zone. So they have to either recreate what they do with even more spin, which may not happen if they are topping out to max spin rate or more speed with their same amount spin that they previously had. Again, which is incredibly hard to do. They may get an additional speed bump but very hard to keep their previous spin without a considerable amount of retooling. And they may never get the spins back up when throwing at an increased speed. Or they learn totally different pitches and change their philosphy. Or learn to be knuckleballer. It's easy to say just adjust location but what made them effective in the first place is gone from them and very few would be able to adjust in just one year.