Mulder throws to batters (updated)
JUPITER, Fla. — Cardinals starter Mark Mulder passed another mile marker in his lengthy trek back to the rotation by throwing batting practice to three minor leaguers early Saturday morning. The lefty threw 30 pitches and improved tremendously from the first batch of 15 to the second.
“I could come away and say my command wasn’t very good but I didn’t really think it was going to be,” Mulder said. ”Did I make a handful of decent pitches? Yeah. Took me a while to get loose. … The last 15 I was much more pleased with.”
Mulder is recovering from two shoulder surgeries that truncated his past two seasons with the Cardinals. An issue since he arrived in St. Louis, Mulder’s delivery have been smooth and effective this spring. During the live batting practice sessions Saturday, his left shoulder no longer showed the lag or hitch that caused him such troubles in recent summers — and led to the discovery of the torn rotator cuff within.
The lefty threw to Oliver Marmol, Allen Craig and Daniel Descalso.
In the first half of his throw, Mulder’s pitches strayed high and he couldn’t get control of his curveball. That changed about the time coach Derek Lilliquist announced that Mulder was halfway through.
“I thought from the beginning he put everything together,” said manager Tony La Russa, who watched from the first-base dugout. “He made a bunch of good throws. For the first time against a hitter, I thought he was very impressive.”
His final five hitters went this way:
- Mulder busted a cutter in on Marmol that snapped the kid’s bat. F6.
- Craig bounced a sinker to third. 5-3.
- Descalso lined a high fastball to right field for a single.
- Marmol chopped out. 6-3.
- Craig fouled a pitch off, way high curving away from right field. Then Craig popped up to short.
Mulder’s throw drew a crowd, including the front-office brain trust (John Mozeliak, John Abbamondi, Alan Benes, et. al.), pitchers Chris Carpenter and Jason Isringhausen, and the pitching coach staff of Dave Duncan and Marty Mason.
While a watershed day in Mulder’s recovery Saturday does little more than offer a hint of his coming timetable. Matt Clement, for example, was conservative and threw batting practice four times before being scheduled for Tuesday’s Triple-A start. Teammates and coaches have been struck by how well Mulder has been throwing, hinting that he could follow a traditional schedule instead of the conservative one set for Clement, who is building back from a year missed after shoulder surgery.
The idea has been to get Mulder against hitters before the team leaves Florida (check), get him into a competition in April, and then off on a rehab assignment to prep for a May return.
“He’s looking more like himself,” La Russa said this morning. “He feels physically very good. Breaking it down and trying to evaluate it while he’s still working the process is not smart.”
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Derrick Goold said he was going to Mizzou for capital-J journalism, but after growing up in the Time Zone Baseball Forgot he was really drawn to MU sitting between two major-league cities. Goold joined the Post-Dispatch in 2001 after working for The Times-Picayune and Rocky Mountain News, covering sports from LSU to NHL and every level of baseball in between. 
Don’t know what you read, but I understood every word of it. I’m just waiting for some nifty Mulder t-shirts of whichever minor league assignments he’s sent on.
Todd, et. al.,
The original filing had some funky letter-droppings and typos. There was a lot lost in translation from copy-paste to publish. Marker was “market”. Lengthy was “length”. Thought was “though” and then was “the”. Screwy, but fixed by now. No t-shirts are forthcoming, smarty.
dg
DG, any word on his velocity?
Kevin,
No gun around to clock it. The ball had free-and-easy speed. The movement and location was the bigger thing to watch. About the time he gets were Clement is now then the gun will come out and be something to watch …
dg
low 80’s
Thanks for the quick answer DG. At least he’s throwing free and easy now.
And thank you other “kevin” for your witty remark.
Not witty at all. There may have been no gun there with the coaching staff, but there was a gun there all the same.
The highest he was clocked was about 84.
He’s going to have to completely reinvent himself or he’s going to get hammered, again.
I’m not sure that velocity — good, bad, indifferent — is a tell-tale sign of a pitcher’s recovery or success when he FIRST throws to batters. Even healthy pitchers warming up through spring don’t throw with the same velocity in their first live BP that they do in their second that they do in their first start. Think Adam Wainwright was chucking the ball at the same speed a month ago that he is now?
Control is a big issue that FIRST time through, and it causes some pitchers to throw tentative. Clement’s pop in his first live BP got a lot of attention, but he’s since dialed it back.
High velocity in early BPs catches eyes. Otherwise, it’s all part of the process, and if it levels off there is an issue to be addressed.
Check back after a few turns.
dg
Maybe he is done…. but I wouldn’t read too much into velocity at this point (first time to live batters)– I would guess he wasn’t “airing it out.” I would look more at whether his arm slot is correct, the ease with which he throws, is he pain-free next morning, and command.
if mulder can’t get strong enough to pitch seven innings, maybe he could be used in the pen this year while he builds endurance?