CLEVELAND — Mike Clevinger leaned back in his leather chair and laughed as he watched a video clip of his pitching motion from three years ago.
“That’s some good leg roll there,” he said.
Earlier this summer, Adam Plutko located a video of Clevinger pitching for Class AA Akron in 2015. Clevinger deemed it “cringeworthy.”
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“I looked like I was bowling,” he said.
“People think he’s herky-jerky now,” Shane Bieber said. “They should’ve seen that video of back then.”
Plutko and Clevinger pitched together throughout the minor leagues, including late in 2014, after the Indians acquired Clevinger from the Angels for the remaining fumes in Vinnie Pestano’s right arm. At that point, Clevinger’s right leg would fall to the side of the mound, costing him potential velocity.
“He looked like Mo’ne Davis,” Plutko said, referencing the 2014 Little League World Series sensation. “Honest to God, break it down frame by frame. He and Mo’ne Davis threw the exact same way. His right foot would sweep behind his left foot. That was excess. There was a bunch of stuff that didn’t need to happen. And slowly over the years, he’s created this identity.”
When asked what he changed, Clevinger responded: “Everything.” Now, he dangles his arm while staring at the catcher’s twitchy fingers. He taps the tip of his left cleat until he’s ready to initiate his motion. He launches his left leg into the air until his knee is even with his chin. After he releases the baseball, he sweeps his right leg across the mound as if he’s attempting to kick a football through some imaginary uprights.
Every part is essential to unleashing the perfect pitch with utmost precision and conviction. And every minor detail has been critical in Clevinger’s blossoming into a front-line starting pitcher who boasts a 2.71 ERA, a 2.39 FIP and 12.8 strikeouts per nine innings.
“Clearly, it works for him,” Bieber said. “He’s an explosive guy, and he has an explosive delivery. We’re two different pitchers with two different styles. I think that’s the beauty of it.”
‘What the hell were you doing?’
Clevinger overhauled his mechanics upon his arrival to the Indians organization in 2014, but he made further enhancements in 2017 and ’18, despite sterling statistics. The most difficult part, he said, was accepting that he needed to make tweaks, even though his results suggested otherwise.
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“I didn’t want to change,” he said, “because I was having success. But that’s what’s funny, is looking back, it seems so obvious now. There was so much more in the tank. Like, ‘What the hell were you doing?’ I was just diving toward the plate. Obviously with the wealth of information that I got from the organization and from having (Trevor) Bauer here, outside resources — now it’s obvious. But at the time, it wasn’t common knowledge.”
Clevinger’s average fastball velocity
| Year | Speed |
|---|---|
| 2016 | 93.9 mph |
| 2017 | 92.5 mph |
| 2018 | 93.6 mph |
| 2019 | 95.7 mph |
Opponents vs. Clevinger’s fastball
| Year | Avg. | Slug |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | .284 | .490 |
| 2017 | .256 | .411 |
| 2018 | .263 | .454 |
| 2019 | .195 | .348 |
Last winter, Clevinger would set up his phone to capture video as he launched a “max intent crow-hop” to someone standing 300 feet away. He then studied his throwing mechanics from that exercise and tried to replicate them when he tossed a bullpen session.
“That’s the most natural, athletic way you’re gonna throw a ball,” Clevinger said, “and I’ve always thrown really, really hard on flat ground. It’s almost like I was letting the slope (of the mound) dictate my mechanics. So I’d film that and then go to the mound to throw my bullpen and throw a few pitches and compare the two and try to get as close as I can to that and that feeling of being in the outfield and ripping the ball to home plate from center field.”
When Clevinger threw to some hitters at a high school, their radar gun registered his fastballs between 92 and 98 mph. He thought he had been reaching the mid- to upper 90s with nearly every pitch. When he arrived at spring training and regularly clocked in at 96 to 98 mph, he exhaled.
“I was like, ‘OK, it is real. It’s here,’” he said.
(Ken Blaze / USA Today)
‘He kicks field goals after he’s done’
Let’s dive into the distinct parts of Clevinger’s delivery.
The arm dangle
Clevinger: “I just never like to hold the ball in my hand. Whenever I would have my arm down, I didn’t want to just (hold the ball). It would take effort to sit still, so just letting it hang and dangle, it’s just more natural, more comfortable.”
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The toe tap
Clevinger: “Rhythm. I couldn’t come straight set. I don’t know how anyone in the world can get their foot to the same exact spot each time, so I was finding it and just really comfortable getting my feet situated and then going.”
Does the number of taps matter?
“No, not at all. It’s until I get comfortable. Sometimes it seems like there’s 10 of them. Sometimes it’s two. It’s like, ‘Oh, I found the spot. That’s the spot.’ It’s like a cat.”
(Ray Carlin / USA Today)
The leg lift
Bieber: “He lifts super high, but he also sinks down at the same time and it’s almost like a hitch. But it’s so consistent and it works for him. Some people might call it a hitch. Some people might call it a cue. I think it’s a cue for him to help him sink into his back leg and do what he needs to do. He moves his body really well for being a big dude. He’s athletic, and I think that all shows in his delivery.”
Clevinger: “I idolized watching guys like Pedro (Martinez) and even Francisco Rodriguez. I was obsessed with the way he threw. I thought he got every bit of what he had out of him. In junior college, I used to throw nothing but out of the stretch because I was closing. I’d get hunched over and I’d bring my knee between my legs and then I’d go.”
The throw
Willis: “I look for, immediately after separation, the angle of his torso or hips. And then I look for the height of his lead arm. Those two things are his keys, getting into the same spot in terms of when you get the ball out of your glove and that leads into allowing you to establish the direction, but it all starts with getting the ball out of the glove over the rubber.”
The leg sweep
Clevinger: “When I was coming back from Tommy John (surgery), they were trying to get me to finish by coming over the traditional way. Whether it was hip mobility or whatever the case may be, I could never do that with max intent. Now, the biomechanics behind it — I didn’t know this at the time, it just kind of happened naturally with my body — but it’s a deceleration mechanism. If I put my leg over, I might fall onto my face, so it’s a deceleration mechanism that my body just adapted to so I didn’t fall over, and I was still able to throw with max intent.”
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Clevinger completes hip mobility drills every day, with additional emphasis on his start days, to keep him agile and able to repeat the various quirks of his delivery without issue.
Clevinger: “It’s been a long, long process, but now I feel like it’s pretty set. There’s still tinkering back and forth between starts and losing it or coming out of it a little bit, but now I feel like I have the near-finished product.”
Bieber: “The leg kick and the follow-through is what makes him him.”
Mike Clevinger, Leg Kick….and curveball. pic.twitter.com/MCNedkific
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 1, 2019
Plutko: “You know what’s funny is, I’ve messed around with it and you can tell when you finish a pitch just right, because if you don’t, then you’re going to be all off and wobbling all over the place. But when you do finish the delivery just right, you have the balance to just sweep and kick it through. That’s what he does. He kicks field goals after he’s done. How hard is that?”
Willis: “I couldn’t do that. There are times, more so with the finish, you think, ‘Well that’s a little awkward.’ But when he repeats it over and over and over, you understand that’s his. That’s the one thing we do talk about, is you don’t necessarily want to emulate everyone else’s delivery. You want to find out what your best delivery is and repeat that. That’s what he does so well.”
Has Terry Francona attempted to mimic Clevinger’s leg sweep?
Francona: “No. I would have one more surgery added to the list.”
(Jerome Miron / USA Today)
‘There’s everything flying everywhere’
When he closed games at Seminole Community College, Clevinger never devoted a minute of brainpower to his pitching mechanics. He simply tried to throw as hard as he could.
That’s still a primary focus, as evidenced by his frequent debates with Bauer about who can throw harder. But Clevinger has grown invested in the science behind it — what permits him to rank in the 87th percentile in the league in fastball velocity and the 96th percentile in strikeout rate. That’s how a pitcher winds up rocking his arm back and forth like a pendulum, tapping his toe like Fred Astaire, lifting his leg toward his face like Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez and swinging his other leg through the air like a Gramatica brother.
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Plutko: “Everyone does it a little bit differently. He definitely gets there. In fact, he gets there better than some, in a lot of different ways. I’d say the finish, the movement at the start and all of that stuff, that makes him him and that makes his delivery his. Does it look a little unconventional, because he doesn’t finish like Greg Maddux on the follow-through? Yeah, totally. But if you were to slow down Greg Maddux’s delivery and his delivery side-by-side, I guarantee you they’d be almost identical. Even Alex Wood, if you truly slow his mechanics down, there’s a lot of stuff happening, but if you slow it down to positions of throwing, it’s the exact same. Same with Joey Lucchesi. He’s funky, he’s all over the place, the leg kick. But when you get to this point, it’s the same as everybody else. It’s just how you get there and then once you’re here, how does that play? That’s the important part of the mechanics, to me.”
Willis: “It’s a different delivery, obviously. It’s one that works well for him. But I think his athleticism allows him to sync it all up. Sometimes there’s a lot of movement prior to the start of his delivery and the tempo may be not one that you’d necessarily teach someone. But for him, it’s what works and allows him to generate the spin and velocity we see.”
Plutko: “From a movement standpoint, how he physically moves, it’s as good as you can get it, really. The way his hip turns, the way his body turns, everything is pretty ideal. It just looks unconventional because there’s a lot going on. There’s hair flying. There are beads in his hair flying. There’s everything flying everywhere. But if you actually break it down and take it frame by frame, there’s so much good in that that creates consistency. So if he was truly out of control, he wouldn’t be able to command the ball like he does, be the same guy every time he takes the mound.
“What I marvel at, really, is just his athleticism and the speed in which he does it. He moves really quickly, but it’s crazy athletic, and you don’t see pitchers that athletic move that quickly very often. I hate to admit this, but I would classify him as more athletic than me, so some of the stuff that he does, I don’t know if I could physically do as well as him. Just like he shouldn’t do some of the stuff that I do, because then he might lose velocity or not command the ball like he does.”
Bieber: “He rubs some people the wrong way, which is kind of his thing sometimes. We were in New York and I was listening to the broadcast in the clubhouse, and the announcers didn’t seem like they were too thrilled about his unorthodox delivery. It really doesn’t matter what they think. He’s going out there and producing and giving us a chance to win every five days, so that’s really all that matters.”
Plutko: “We came up every step of the way together. Ever since ’14 on, we played every year together. I’d say from Double A on, he’s had his delivery. He was going through some stuff in Double A, in terms of his delivery, and toward the back end of that year, he really found it. From then on, it’s just been clicking, clicking, clicking.”
(Top photo: Wendell Cruz / USA Today)
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