Long tossing is something of a hot-button issue in Major League Baseball. Some teams and players swear by it, others eschew it. So contentious is the long toss issue that it became a significant sticking point during the most recent amateur draft, as eventual high picks Trevor Bauer and Dylan Bundy told teams that forbid long toss not to bother drafting them. They’re not changing for nobody, man.
Bauer eventually went as the third overall pick to the Arizona Diamondbacks, who happily let the young righty continue tossing from in upwards of 300 feet. Ahead of his first Spring Training start yesterday, Bauer went into his long toss routine as per usual. Turns out watching a guy throw a baseball 350 feet tends to draw a crowd.
Trevor Bauer throwing long toss from right field to his catcher, who is standing on the left field foul line twitter.com/keithlaw/statu…
— keithlaw (@keithlaw) March 3, 2012
Keith Law has the “taken from a mile away” twitpic (from the press box, the only spot he could gain this perspective, to be fair), Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic has the play-by-play:
But within 10 minutes, it was anything but. Bauer had backed up to near the fence in right-center field, where he was simulating his pitching motion from the stretch before uncorking a high-arching throw to Blanco, who remained along the left field line.
No big deal, just heaving a baseball halfway across the Earth. But wait, Bauer wasn’t finished.
Then, Bauer began to drift farther and farther toward the right-field foul pole, eventually needing to crow-hop to launch his throws, which got to Blanco on the fly nearly every time.
By this point, his teammates had turned their attention toward him, staring as though they’d never seen anything like it. Most likely, they hadn’t. Even the Colorado Rockies players warming up along the right-field line had stopped what they were doing. Just about every player for both teams was watching.
As far as the pitching went, Bauer did just fine in his two innings. But the crazy long toss was all anybody wanted to talk about.
“I was a little shorter today than I normally am, but it’s early in the spring. Today, probably 360 (feet), something like that. A lot of times I’ll get out to about 400 on game day, but it’s early in spring.”
Bauer is a client of something called Jaeger Sports, a high-performance training company that boasts quite the lineup of Major Leaguers in its roster. Here is video of former Diamondback and Jaeger client Dan Haren doing his long toss from last spring.
So we agree: long toss is awesome. Maybe they should just call it that – awesome toss. Without knowing much (read: anything) about physiology, it seems to me that the ability to throw the ball 300 feet with minimal effort bodes well for those seeking to throw the ball from 60 feet with extreme prejudice.
The Texas Rangers made headlines and attracted praise for their emphasis on long toss and, in the short term, the results back them up. It will be interesting to see how many teams steadfastly cling to their 120 foot max as consensus shifts to a pro-awesome toss stance.
Either way, this is the kind of show it is worth arriving early at the ballpark to catch. Spring Training: not entirely useless after all!
I wish I could play awesome toss
Anyone know if the Jays support long tossing?
Good question. I’ll find out, I promise.
I am officially in favor of you only referring to it as awesome-toss in all future posts and simply linking the word to this post
They should add a skills competition to the All Star festivities – along with the home run derby, add “Longest Toss”, “Fastest Fastball”, “Fastest Runner”. You can even do something similar to the slam-dunk competition – hit some flyballs to the outfield and have some outfielders do their best diving catches.
From the video it looks like the catcher is returning the throws without much trouble. Is there something that makes the pitchers doing this particularly impressive?
When Bauer was doing it, the catcher used a cutoff man. No joke!
How hard of a rope was Bauer tossing on? Anything close to a rope is impressive, but throwing 300+ feet well into the air isn’t really. It’s unusual sure, but most major leaguers should be able to do it (Shannon Stewart and Johnny Damon excluded of course).
Considering the entire stadium stopped what they were doing to watch him, I think it classifies as “impressive.”
Fair enough. I asked only because the Haren video wasn’t impressive at all.
You’d probably be surprised how far you can throw a ball, it’s not as difficult as it seems. It’s much harder to throw a lower, less arcing, fast ball, which isn’t what haren is doing in the video.
So Drew no follow-up on the Jays stance on long-toss?
I’ll have a better chance of getting to the bottom of it when the team comes north.