The Importance of a Good Relaease Point.

            As a kid, I’m sure you didn’t hear enough from your father or pitching coach about the importance of a good easy delivery. Well, one of the things that factors in to that, is a consistent release point. Obviously, you need to keep your elbow above your shoulder and at times, your hand behind your ear, but even Major League pitchers have problems keeping the same arm angle or as we’ve seen recently with the injury prone Joel Zumaya, your arm can simply give out if your elbow lags or if you fail to maintain steady mechanics.

By steady mechanics, it doesn’t really matter whether you throw using a three-quarter delivery or the normal yet old school, over the shoulder delivery that kept many pitchers such as Greg Maddux healthy for his entire career. But putting health aside, you can flat out pitch poorly without a consistent arm angle and release point.

This is the difference between Yovani Gallardo's (left) release point and Roy Halladay's (right) release point:

As Jeff noted, Gallardo did switch to the first base side of the rubber after May 18th, thus changing his release point, though he did go through a rough patch shortly after the switch and was inconsistent. Yovani Gallardo had trouble with his fastball. His fastball was pretty average in 2010, even with an average velocity of 92.6 but this graph suggests his release point was a factor in his failure to locate at times. Keep in mind as well, that the positive horizontal movement on ones fastball can result in unintentional cutting movement which causes more bore than regular cut or sink. Now,  again, the more spread out or bigger that "blob" of release points is, the more the pitcher struggled to find a consistent release point. Thus, a pitcher like Roy Halladay who keeps a release point nearly perfect when throwing all of his pitches will have a graph that looks like the aformentioned one on the right. Halladay throws at a mid-three quarter angle with a release point that’s nearly identical for every pitch he throws, resulting in durability, consistency, deception, and success. Gallardo has had recent success, but certainly a few hitches in his delivery that need to be nailed down, such as again, a consistent release point.

Nevertheless, an inconsistent release point doesn’t mean you’re a “bad” pitcher. It means you simply aren’t able to throw all of your pitches the same way, or with consistent velocity for the respective pitch. Again, for a pitcher like Gallardo, I do question his long-term success against someone like Roy Halladay, but as I said previously, a consistent delivery will result in a consistent release point which will cause hitters to question each pitch you throw giving you what many like to call “command of all of your pitches.” But face it, no pitcher is perfect.