Milwaukee Brewers Get 5-2 Win Over Chicago White Sox
· Yahoo Sports
Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Shane Drohan put together two scoreless innings as the Brewers picked up a 5-2 Cactus League win on Friday over the Chicago White Sox. Drohan came over, along with pitcher Kyle Harrison and infielder David Hamilton, from the Boston Red Sox for Caleb Durbin.
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One pitch that Drohan spent time working on over the winter was his changeup. He talked about his efforts to rekindle his connection to his changeup with MLB.com Brewers beat reporter Adam McCalvy.
“It’s human nature. You want to impress, being the new guy,” Drohan said. “But when you play for so long, you have to settle in and do what you know you’re good at and what got you here. It’s knowing who you are as a pitcher and sticking to it.”
Drohan followed in the footsteps of Brandon Sproat, who was acquired from the New York Mets as part of the Brewers sending Freddy Peralta to that organization.
Both Sproat and Drohan worked on different pitches in the offseason and were able to come into the Brewers' organization and keep honing their skills.
“They’re not like, ‘Let’s change everything,’” Sproat told McCalvy. “They’re taking what I had and making it better.”
“When I got here,” Drohan said, “they were like, ‘Just be yourself. Do what you do. We’ll get into the details later.’”
Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook has been around the organization's minor-league system during his time with the franchise. Now, Hook is the big-league club's pitching coach, a role he's held for some time.
Another element in Milwaukee's focus on pitchers is how they have been using video work to help pitchers get better. They have an in-house video system where Hook and others can break down a pitcher's performance and show them what's working and what's not working in a setting.
Then, pitchers can take that feedback and work on technique and mechanics to improve over time.
It's a pattern that helped Peralta become the ace of the Brewers' pitching staff. Now, other Brewers pitchers are going to have to fill Peralta's void.
“As we’re going through the process, there’s a slow leak of what we’re doing, and then at some point it’s like, ‘OK, let’s sit down and talk about this,’” Hook said. “Then I know the kid better. I know, ‘He doesn’t need all that.’ Or I know that he needs 1, 2 and 3 but not 4, 5 and 6 in our plan. That’s the way we do it here. It’s the dosage of the medicine.”
What Hook, along with Brewers manager Pat Murphy, hopes to see is incremental improvement in their pitchers. Using this style of video work, along with guidance and coaching, gives the Brewers a sort-of pitching lab.
It's been a system that has proven successful. Now, Sproat and Drohan can take advantage of this and get better over time.
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