It Looks Like Carter Capps Has Added A Second Hop To His Already Borderline Illegal Delivery
By now, you probably know who Carter Capps is if you’re a baseball fan. He’s that relief pitcher who basically crow hops off the rubber towards home plate before releasing the baseball. Since he arrived at the major league level, there’s pretty much a debate over whether or not his delivery is legal every time that he takes the mound. When it comes to lighting up the radar gun, there’s actual velocity, and perceived velocity. In 2015, Capps threw a fastball that was 99 MPH, but the perceived velocity was 105.55 MPH, which was the highest mark that year. It’s pretty obvious why there’s such a wide gap there.
Capps missed the entire 2016 season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and was actually being considered to take over the Marlins’ closer spot last year. Instead, he did not pitch a single inning for Miami, and was dealt to the San Diego Padres as part of the Andrew Cashner trade. In his first spring training with the Padres, it looks like Capps is working on a delivery that includes taking not one, but TWO hops towards the plate before his delivery.
For what it’s worth, there are videos from Padres camp in which he’s doing his customary one hop towards the plate:
Could be something similar to Johnny Cueto, who can feature several different deliveries in the span of just one at-bat. Location is obviously incredibly important when it comes to the science of pitching, but so is deception. And this motherfucker has to be the most deceptive pitcher in major league history, even more so now that he’s going with a double hop delivery. I don’t see how the double hop could possibly be legal, but then again, I didn’t think MLB would allow the one hop to go on for very long, and they’ve yet to say that he can’t do that.
If they let the double hop delivery fly, then I don’t see why he’d stop there. Go for the quadruple hop, and start firing fastballs from the grass in front of the mound with a perceived velocity of 150 MPH.