Getting to the height of the matter: some executives believe the taller the pitcher, the better: often a player's size will dictate how teams make decisions regarding draft selections

Baseball Digest, Sept, 2003 by David Andriesen

MARINERS ACE JAMIE MOYER isn't easily intimidated anymore, but when he was 21, he found one lineup overwhelming.

"I remember in rookie ball, the first time we played the Yankees' rookie team," Moyer said of the 1984 matchup. "It was like a team of giants."

When 6-foot-8 right-hander J.R. Richard stormed the major leagues in the 1970s with the Houston Astros, it got baseball executives thinking about the advantages of the altitudinous, particularly in pitching. The Yankees were most aggressive and continue to operate under the theory that height makes right--they drafted 46 players in 2002, all taller than six feet.

The Yankees are no longer alone in the search for skyscrapers. The average major league pitcher now is nearly 6-3, and less than seven percent of the pitchers on season-opening 40-man rosters--which include a team's major leaguers and top prospects--are listed under six feet.

Former NBA players and washed-out college basketball players are being courted regularly, and several teams have dispatched scouts to an area in China where there are reportedly more than 200 seven-footers.

"I find myself writing up a six-foot guy as a short right-hander, and the guy is six feet tall," said Roger Jongewaard, Mariners vice president of scouting and player development. "He's not really short, but for pitching he is."

If Moyer, who is optimistically listed at six feet, were a right-hander, the man with the best winning percentage in the majors since 1996 probably would not be in the big leagues at all. Height is used to separate right-handers of similar ability, but lefties are mostly exempt.

"Right-handers," Moyer said, "are a dime a dozen."

"A right-handed pitcher throwing 84-85 mph in college with a big slow curveball, there's literally 1,000 guys like that out there," said Mariners pitching coach Bryan Price. "What. a scout wouldn't necessarily have seen in Jamie is his heart. But as a prospect, he might never have gotten the chance to show his heart and his competitiveness if he threw right-handed."

Left-handers, who account for 27 percent of roster pitchers, make up 43 percent of those less than six feet. In the majors, lefties are a little more than half an inch shorter, on average, than righties. The gap is probably even wider, as the heights of shorter players are routinely exaggerated on rosters.

There are several reasons cited in support of tall pitchers:

* They raise the mound. In 1969, major League baseball, in an effort to increase offense, lowered the pitcher's mound from 15 inches to 10 inches. Put a 6-8 pitcher up there, and the batter's advantage is eliminated.

* The gear effect. Physics tells us that comparing a smaller arc and a wider arc, the wider arc generates more velocity from the same force.

* "Creating plane." In the roughly level path of a bat swing, it's easier to make square contact with a ball traveling with a flatter angle than one with a more pronounced angle.

* Closing the distance. The release point of a pitcher with longer arms is closer to the plate, cutting that 60 feet, six inches down. Given the split-second window in which a batter must decide whether to swing, even a few inches make a difference--both physically and psychologically. "With Randy Johnson, it feels like he's releasing the ball ten feet from the plate," Price said.

There also is a more dubious factor at work: the long-held belief that shorter right-handers--but not their left-handed counterparts--are prone to injury. Whether it's attributable to some unknown factor or simply a baseball myth, many scouts still subscribe to it Even Price can't debunk the theory.

"My feeling is that there is some legitimacy to that, and consequently 5-10 right-handers aren't going to get drafted," he said.

Being a tall pitcher has its challenges as well. Longer limbs are tougher to control and generate force that leaves them susceptible to injuries.

"Taller people have the most problems with their mechanics," said Jeff Nelson, the Mariners' 6-8 setup man. "The rotation is not as tight, not as compact, and there is more room for errors. We can go out of whack easier than the shorter guys. Plus a little guy, to wind up, just raises his leg, but when we raise our leg we have to raise it way up, so guys tend to steal on us a little more because we're a little slower to the plate."

One American League scout, whose team does not use height as a determining factor, says the whole thing is nonsense.

"The best pitcher in baseball (Bostoffs Pedro Martinez) is 5-10," he said. "Tim Hudson is 5-11 or six feet. Greg Maddux is under six feet. Once a guy makes the initial cut, performance dictates everything.

"Some clubs dismiss guys on height, but it's silly. With the shortage of pitching out there, why limit yourself?"

Silly or not, when all else is equal, the benefit of the doubt goes to the taller guy.

"You're looking at guys who you think have potential to get better, to do something with their mechanics, to gain strength--but you already have the basic height," Price said. "You have the long, loose, quick arm. If you're going to make a mistake, you're going to make a mistake with a bigger pitcher rather than a smaller one."