He gave up two hits, five harmless ground balls and a strike out in two innings. That hardly counts as hammering it.

thinks he's smarter than he is.  It's pretty easy to be an armchair scout and call pitches and brag about being right to you when you weren't there to acknowledge his superiority.  I'm calling bullshit.  Sounds like he just wants to scare you into thinking Garza is telegraphing his pitches.  Seriously, where was he sitting?

I did see Garza pitch, and I'll admit I wasn't watching delivery.  But out of the handful of curveballs he threw, about half of them were pretty good with a nice break, and the Yankee hitters didn't seem to know they were coming.

Definitely wouldn't be worrying about what your friend says.  Let's see how Garza actually performs before we fret over whether his offspeed stuff is good enough.  I'm looking forward to his start against the Sox.

Garza threw only 30 pitches.

1. I doubt 1 in 1,000,000 fans could pick up a variance in a big-league pitcher's delivery during an entire ballgame, let alone during 30 pitches.
2. I doubt there were 20 people in the stands who even studied Garza during each of his deliveries.
3. Lastly, I doubt there was a single fan in attendance who studied him during his bullpen and on-mound warm-up tosses.

If he wasn't watching No. 3, he wasn't interested enough to be looking for a tip-off in Garza's delivery.

Came on a curveball. So at least one Yankee hitter couldn't tell the difference between the curve and fastball delivery.

Every pitcher has a little slower arm speed for the curve, which is why you mix the slider in to give hitters a different look on the breaking ball. Good hitters recognize the twist of the wrist that you have to use when you throw a breaking ball. That doesn't mean they'll hit it  fair if it's got bite on it. And Garza's breaking balls have good bite.

Garza's challenge is hitting his spots with the breaking stuff, not disguising his pitches. If he hits his spots, his stuff is good enough that, even if they think they know what's coming, they won't have a chance.

Again, he gave up one soft line drive out of eight batters he faced. One bloop and one dribbler through the hole mixed in with five slow rollers and a strikeout is not getting hammered. Perhaps your friend was getting hammered when he said that.

I look forward to seeing him pitch six innings and seeing if the hitters pick something up for the second time through the order. That's a better indicator of whether he's tipping his pitches.

>>Every pitcher has a little slower arm speed for the curve, which is why you mix the slider in to give hitters a different look on the breaking ball.

1. Being that not every pitcher has a slider, that would mean those who lack a slider would be dead meat eventually. Yet pitchers who throw fastball and curves can survive if both are good pitchers that they can locate.
2. The slider fools hitters into thinking it's a fastball. It's not thrown to "give hitters a different look on the breaking ball." You throw a slider off a fastball, not off a curve, in tandem with a curve, or anything else with the curve.

A slider is thrown to make hitters think it's a fastball, not to confuse them that it's a curve. And in fact most hitters will think a good slider is a fastball until the last few feet.

Use sparingly with low-ball hitters.

>> Good hitters recognize the twist of the wrist that you have to use when you throw a breaking ball.

No. By the time the ball rolls off the fingers good hitters are following the baseball. Remember, you've got about half a second in this whole deal, from hand to plate.

What good hitters recognize on the curveball is the early arc, or they pick up the fact the spin is different. This is what they recognize. Knowing the curveball is coming two-tenths of a second into the pitch doesn't mean you'll hit it.  That's the real trick.

Only if a pitcher tips his delivery on the curve will a good hitter recognize there is a different delivery motion -- either an arm angle or other body adjustment that differs from the fastball.

I just remember interviews of some of the greats, Carew and Puckett to name two. They often said they tried to see the ball out of the pitchers' hand. They looked for the wrist twist and then tried to pick up the spin. Not all took this approach, but those two did.

And Anderson is the one who talks about changing speeds on the breaking ball. Last year he talked about trying to get Garza to throw the curve and slider with the same arm motion, the difference being how tightly he grips the ball as he releases it. That's one way Nathan, Guerrier and Bonser have improved since coming to the Twins: All three throw both the curve and the slider and use the differences in speed and break to keep the hitter of balance. They also use other methods, but it's one way.

is clearly tipping his pitches. The White Sox made contact with a few of those! ;P