How Josh Outman really wants to throw a baseball

If the name Josh Outman is mentioned to average baseball fans, they might remember that he pitched in Colorado and gave up a ton of runs—and prior to that, pitched in Oakland and gave up a fair amount of runs. Beyond that, not much stands out. His delivery isn’t unique, he doesn’t throw terribly hard, and he is pretty forgettable. He is, after all, basically a replacement-level pitcher.

This is Outman pitching with the Oakland Athletics:

Josh Outman - Athletics

Nothing special about that—pretty average delivery for a left-handed pitcher. With Oakland, his fastball velocity was 93-94 mph. He combined that with a slider, curve and change.

But here’s how Josh Outman first learned how to throw a baseball:

Josh Outman - Outman Methodology

The Outman Methodology

Josh Outman at Age 13Josh and his brother, Zach, were taught to throw a baseball by their father, Fritz Outman. Fritz has developed the Outman Methodology, which is a method of throwing a baseball in a manner that is certainly not conventional.

The Outman Methodology hopes to deliver a pitch on a purely vertical plane and to avoid side-to-side casting of the pitching arm. In this respect, it is similar to the mechanical pattern of Dr. Mike Marshall’s ideal theoretical delivery. However, it differs from both the Marshall-style delivery and the conventional traditional pitching mechanical model in a variety of ways, as evidenced by Josh’s video above. The specific details can be found on the Outman Methodology website, which is quite detailed, to say the least!

Fritz and I have spoken a number of times via email and phone, and he’s been a great source of information. I’ve folded in some of the methods I’ve learned into how I train baseball pitchers, and I believe the concepts have been immensely useful. However, regardless of my thoughts on the full Outman Methodology—or even what positive or negative aspects it may have—the question that always eluded me was this: Why was Josh forced to change how he throws the baseball?

Josh Outman’s success in high school and junior college was well-documented—his fastball velocity was easily 90+ as a high school senior and as a JC pitcher, and he had solid peripherals while using the Outman Methodology. However, he was told that he would go undrafted unless he changed his mechanics to something a little more conventional.

So when he went to Central Missouri, he adopted a traditional wind-up and set position for the first time in his life, posting pretty solid statistics while doing so, despite the fact that he was really learning to throw all over again. Pitchers struggle with making the smallest change in their mechanics; imagine scrapping everything you know about how to throw a baseball and replacing it with an entirely different model! Do you think you’d suffer control problems? Lose velocity?

Outman would go on to be drafted by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2005, going in the 10th round. He would progress through the minors—albeit with a high walk rate—and would be traded with Adrian Cardenas and Matthew Spencer to Oakland in the Joe Blanton deal.

Prior to the 2009 season, Josh would give an interview with David Lauria (then with Baseball Prospectus). In the interview, he touched on why he was forced to change his pitching mechanics:

David Lauria: Phillies assistant general manager Mike Arbuckle was quoted as saying that you probably would have been drafted much lower had you not changed your motion, because people would have been afraid of the injury factor. What are your thoughts on that?

Josh Outman: I think that was an assumption made under faulty information. What I was taught actually took stress off of my arm, so there wasn’t full comprehension on how my motion worked. Using a vertical arm position freed up my rotator cuff and enabled the use of the larger pectoral and abdominal muscle groups rather than the smaller deltoids and various other shoulder muscles. It used my lats to slow my arm down rather than just the posterior deltoids, and because those are larger, stronger muscles that can withstand more force, it took a large workload off of my shoulder muscles. And eliminating the leg kick in lieu of a normal walking step, I was expending less energy to get the same production from my body, while sparing my throwing arm much of the wear and tear associated with pitching.

When asked about advantages and disadvantages to the switch:

DL: Unconventionality aside, were there any disadvantages to the motion?

JO: What’s interesting is that it never really even came up. Nobody was really interested if there was an actual downside. People just thought that it didn’t look right and was therefore wrong and needed to be changed. The answer to the question is no, I don’t think there were any disadvantages.

DL: Are there specific advantages, or disadvantages, with your current motion?

JO: The biggest disadvantage is the added stress and wear and tear that is put on my pitching arm. The only real advantage at this point is that I am able to play baseball professionally using conventional mechanics.

I added the bold for emphasis, because in 2009, Josh Outman would suffer an injury to his pitching elbow&mdasdh;requiring Tommy John surgery. He missed half of the 2009 season and the entirety of 2010.

Josh would pitch in 2011, and though his velocity was down a tick, he was fairly effective using traditional statistics, throwing 58.1 innings and posting a 3.70 ERA, though his xFIP was 4.77 and his strikeout rate had dropped. He would be traded in the offseason to the Colorado Rockies for Seth Smith, and during that time, gave an interview to David Lauria again (with Fangraphs). David asked Josh about his elbow injury:

David Laurila: You blew out your arm in the middle of the 2009 season. Would that have happened with your old delivery?

Josh Outman: The injury itself was a partially-torn ulnar collateral ligament, which is the Tommy John ligament. Would it have happened with my old delivery? There’s no way to know for sure. Would the probability have been lessened? Yes, I think so.

David asked Josh a bunch of questions about the Outman Methodology as well as his traditional delivery, then closed with this depressing exchange:

DL: What do think would happen if you walked into camp and announced that you were going back to your old delivery?

JO: I think what would happen is that I’d find myself out of a job, or at least not in the same position that I want to be in. I can’t speak to the Rockies, because I’m new to the organization and have just had the one conversation, but it seems like just about anyone would be willing to watch, just to see it. But as far as accepting it&mdasdh;being willing to take a chance on it… I don’t know.

I have independently verified through sources then with the Athletics that Josh asked to modify his delivery to get closer to the Outman Methodology way of throwing a ball, and the player development department steadfastly refused to allow him to do so, threatening to permanently stash in him in Triple-A or even a lower minor league affiliate. From what I was told, no one even asked questions, and when Josh tried to escalate the issue, he ran into continual resistance and eventually gave up.

Josh’s future

Despite being lights out in spring training as a reliever, Outman was sent to Triple-A Colorado Springs to begin the 2013 season. He is still pitching conventionally, and as long as he does, he will likely stay a replacement-level pitcher.

What is the risk in allowing Josh to throw the way he was taught—a way that he insists will significantly reduce his control problems and increase the command of his entire arsenal? It’s clear that Colorado does not see him as a fixture in the big league rotation or bullpen. The Rockies don’t have a lot of investment in him (unlike their first-round Marshall hybrid pitcher Tyler Matzek, which is a story for another day), so why force him to fail doing the thing he doesn’t want to do?

However, things may be changing: A pitching coordinator with a different team told me “If we could get Josh in our system, we’d let him use the Outman Methodology in the minors until he proved to us he could compete at the big-league level. And we’d have no problem letting him use it there.”

Outman’s long-term future may not be with Colorado, but he should know that his dream (stated back in the 2008 Lauria interview) may still be alive:

DL: Can you foresee a scenario in which Josh Outman stands on the mound in a professional game and delivers a pitch with his old motion?

JO: Yes, I can. It may not be in the near future, but at some point the time will be right.


Kyle owns Driveline Baseball and Driveline Biomechanics Research, and has authored The Dynamic Pitcher, a comprehensive book and video set dedicated to developing elite youth baseball pitchers. He is also a consultant for an MLB team and a major Division-I college program. Follow him on Twitter @drivelinebases or email him here.
9 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
studes
10 years ago

Seriously, what do teams have to lose? Seems silly.

thanks for the article, Kyle.

Mike
10 years ago

You don’t know anything. The world is flat, the world is flat, the world is flat. BECAUSE I SAID SO!!!

jEFF
10 years ago

They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on each player (even in a trade the investment is correlated).  I have a few current and ex ballplayers and management come into my bar.  I was shocked how much was spent on a low round draft pick.  No wonder we pay such high ticket prices to see a game.

Yehoshua Friedman
10 years ago

I am shocked. The players successfully struggled to abolish the reserve clause and to negotiate through agents and achieved all what looks to us ordinary folks like obscene amounts of money. No more used cars and bars in the off season. But the player still doesn’t have the elementary right to his own body and how he uses it. Baseball is hidebound and almost impenetrable to new ideas. Outman needs the opportunity to do it his way.

jEFF
10 years ago

No, it’s capitalism!  They own you until you quit.  It is only when the public interferes that the owner’s power is mitigated for a brief time.

Edward Martel
10 years ago

As a former professional pitcher who sustained injuries to my shoulder and elbow it is always interesting to witness the disputes that exist in baseball about throwing mechanics.  I have been a practicing physical therapist for over a decade and have treated thousands of throwing injuries.  I became a therapist because of the lack of biomechanical understanding of the throwing motion.  Recruiting velocity in the throwing motion can be angulated in different ways.  Knowing why injuries happen requires an understanding of joint positioning and pathological progression of injury inside the shoulders complex.  Structural asymmetries exist internally that must be considered when deciding how someone should accelerate the ball.  The throwing motion must maximize three things linear acceleration, angular momentum, and the effect of gravity all while positioning the shoulder and elbow in arthrokinematically safe spots that allow the athlete to synchronize the kinematic sequence. 
The fault in Mike Marshalls methodolgy is that he doesn’t maximize the angular momentum component of the throwing motion and exposes the anterior capsule to the arthrological limit which translates the joint reaction force more to the elbow.  Without having seen whatever the kids name throw on video it is next to impossible to determine if he utilizing a longer lever arm or exposing his anterior bundle of the UCL to excessive shear force.  The UCl gets injured because of its orientation between the ulna and humerus and traction and shear stress between the two bones is too great during the maximal external rotation moment of the acceleration phase.  I find it interesting to see so many people have such varying ideas when there are only two ways to injure the body compression or traction.  I rehabilitate injured athletes all day long and am
surprised when there are so many varying opinions and such stern objection to one method or another without a formal education in medicine to justify
their stances.  Ed Martel MPT,OMPT,SCS
Owner HealthQuest Physical Therapy
Founder Overhead Athletic Institute

David
10 years ago

Looks like that would be easy to steal on.

Kyle Boddy
10 years ago

Two scouts have since chastised me about the line where I said “[he] doesn’t throw terribly hard.”

One of them saw Outman throwing pseudo-traditionally up to 99 MPH in a winter league. The other saw him throwing using the Outman Methodology up to 96 MPH back in JC.

Sorry, all. smile

John C
10 years ago

Let him try it his way. If he’s not of much value to a major-league team pitching conventionally, then why not try something else? I don’t see it as any different than Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey saving their careers by becoming knuckleball pitchers.

That Oakland wouldn’t go along is surprising. You’d think that would be an organization that was willing to think outside the box.