- Richard Todd, WebBall

Recently I read a non-baseball article that discussed the contrasting approaches of simplicity vs complexity. While not written about baseball instruction, I think it applies to any discussion about "Filthy Pitching" and "Effective Velocity" - the new paradigm for pitch selection & sequence developed by Perry Husband and explained in his books.


At first glance that other article made the desire for a simple solution sound like the search for the holy grail, or the Unified Theory of astrophysics. The article even quoted Leonardo da Vinci who declared "simplicity, the ultimate sophistication".

No doubt, that's what we'd all like for baseball. Consider that among pitchers is a desire to find the magic bullet - the simple solution that will tell you exactly what pitch to throw and when to throw it.

And it's not just about pitching. There've been any number of times in the last few months when I get how-do-I questions from a player or coach and what he really wants to know is - tell me exactly what to do and make it a quick fix that will always work.

Closer to home, I've received any number of comments about Perry Husband's approach and his analysis of pitcher-hitter match-ups, and mixed in with positives about how this could revolutionize pitching instruction, there is an undercurrent - and at times a surface wave - that says it's impossible to understand this stuff, impossible to teach it. It's way too complicated.

"Complicated", yes for certain. "Way too" perhaps not.

That other article actually had to do with the way we as consumers choose our cars and home electronics. The best example cited was the digital camera. Here's how we buy: In the absence of a detailed understanding of what we need the camera for, and what features really are important to us personally, what buyers tend to do is get the most bang for the buck - more features. Why? They want to protect themselves from making a mistake, from buying a camera that doesn't have the one feature they will really need some day. More to the point, the one feature they don't even know they need.

So how does this apply to Perry's hard-copy and web-based books?


In my view, the complexity and thoroughness he shows is to protect us from ourselves. To keep us from thinking that all we need to know is fastball up, breaking pitch down, or hard in, soft away. To give us more insights - more features - than we can possibly handle at first, so that at some point when we really need to decide for ourselves what approach is crucial, we have the complete picture - before we take our snapshot.

Now I'm like you. My first reaction to Perry's stuff was not a desire to embrace the complexity. I wanted him to keep it simple. And even now, after reading this other article and getting the idea that sometimes we need more features than we will ever use, I still long for simplicity - just tell me what to do, coach.

Tough.

If it were easy and obvious then you'd expect every pitcher to master Effective Velocity in a week and deceive every batter on every at-bat.

Then again, if it were that simple, then you should also expect the hitters to see right through the pitcher's attempted deception - turning filthy pitches into clean hits.

So, it has to be complicated for no other reason than that the pitcher needs to have as many options as possible to follow one pitch with another in a sequence that deceives the helpless/hopeless batter - always keeps him guessing. The pitch arsenal - in terms of grip, location, velocity, movement - has to be feature laden, diverse, complex. Not only that, but he has to be good enough mechanically to deliver on intent - to put each pitch at the right speed in the right spot on demand.

Hard to grasp, and hard to execute. And that's good. If it were easy, everyone would do it equally well, no one would get paid $5 million to do it, and we wouldn't watch.

As we know, you can't phone in the game or your performance. The unpredictability of baseball - it's complexity - is what we love, and why we continue to seek answers. You should not expect to find them on a quick read of Perry's research. And that just makes it all the more worthwhile trying to really work at it. Who knows - maybe you'll be the one pitcher or instructor who does find a magic answer in Perry's work.  And if not then, along with the rest of us, enjoy the journey towards discovery.