BL Blogcast: All-Star Franklin Gets a Grip (Part 1)
FROM THE FANFEST — Through his years in the majors and through all his roles in the majors, St. Louis Cardinals closer Ryan Franklin has collected pitches like some collect jerseys or others collect service time.
A few spring trainings ago, Post-Dispatch photographer Chris Lee and myself worked on a photo essay of Franklin’s handful of grips. He has a variety of fastballs, a slider, a curve and the pitch he dusted-off at Wrigley Field in a previous series. But more about that in Part 2. Using Lee’s photos as an inspiration and the new toy as a tool, Franklin, a freshly minted All-Star, sat down to offer some video evidence and visual explanation of the different pitches he throws. He talks about when he uses them, how he learned them and why they work.
But first, he has to show you the trick he’s mastered with all those innings out in the bullpen:
Part 2 coming later today here in Bird Land.
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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. 
What kind of velocity does Franklin get on his fastball?
Some pitchers struggle for their whole careers (sometimes a decade or longer) to master and consistently apply a third or even a second pitch. Why is Franklin so versatile? Is he just smarter? Do the other guys have learning disabilities? It seems like Franklin must be a guy with rock-solid mechanics if he can fiddle around with pitches and grips the way he does. Perhaps that’s something to address in the alluded to Part II.