An Apology Extended and Trevor Revisited.

   First I want to extend an apology to elcroata. I was not trying to show you up or skirt around your comment. For some reason I felt my answer to your question would have taken longer than a typical reply in a comments section, which is wholly false. The answer is yes, I felt that his mechanics in his last NY start were better than in Chicago earlier in the year. I apologize for not anwering your question. I, and I am sure I speak for most here, respect the work that you post.

Warning: This may be a bit of a long post. 

Before I start I need to make the warning that scouting from the centerfield camera rarely works and can be a dangerous thing to do. Thankfully, it works out in this case.

As I said in my last Fan Post, I think Cahill's problems, specifically his control problems, stem from him pulling with his front shoulder too much. What exactly do I mean by this?

The power for hitting and pitching comes from the same place, the core/hips. Envision a hitter that explodes his hips too soon, what happens? One of two things; 1) He hits it a mile foul or 2) makes extremely weak contact because he has no power other than his arms. The latter is what happens when a pitcher pulls his front shoulder too much. If you feel so inclined do the following;

1.Toe the rubber in the stretch
2. Lift your front leg to a 90-degree angle even with your hip
3.Stride and land toward the plate and break your hands so you make a backsward-upsidedown 'L' (your front elbow should be pointing at the catchers glove and your throwing arm making the bottom part of the 'L' and that elbow even or above the shoulder)
4. Now we are going to do two different things with this step. You should now have both feet on the ground in what is called the "power position."
    - First, take your front elbow and really jerk it toward your glove-side hip while rotating your hips. You should feel that if you were to throw the ball it would be most with your arms.
    - Now go back to the power position, but this time take your chest to your glove. Feel any difference? You should feel like you are moving more in a straight line towards the catcher and able to "stay on top of the ball" a bit better.

Step 4 is where I feel that Trevor is having his problems. As a sinkerballer Cahill wants to stay on top of the pitch. Envision the ball cut into a North and South hemisphere. Knowing the Magnus Effect, the idea of throwing the top half of the ball (stay on top of the ball) should make sense. What happens when Trevor pulls his front shoulder his arm drags through the pitching zone (much like bat drag) and he gets under the ball because his arm is having to play catch up. Let's look at a couple pictures (sorry I am not good a gif-ing, yet) that will help, hopefully, make this clear.

We're going back all the way to June 9th for his start against the White Sox in Chicago. This was probably his worst outing, in my opinion. Juan Pierre is the hitter. In this three-pitch at-bat he throws two consecutive pitches that illustrate Step 4 perfectly.

This is his very first pitch ofthe game. Currently he is in his power position transitioning into his tuck-turn. Just looking at his upper half you notice two things; 1) how far behind his throwing arm is to his head and 2) you almost cannot read the first half of the team name on the front of his jersey(all you see is the 'O'). The latter is 95% of the time a dead giveaway that a guy is pulling his front shoulder.

 This is the very next pitch. Take a second and look at the picture, notice anything different? You should see a ton. His arm, although still far behind his head, looks like it's getting into a better slot, for him, and you can still see his glove. Notice the name on the jersey, you can read the 'Oak' and almost make out the 'l'. His front shoulder is also closed off well and he almost looks like he is aiming to the RHH batters box. Now lets look at the release point.

Pitch 1

Pitch 2

Cahill does a good job of getting his body square at the release, but take note of the ball from the 1st to 2nd pitch. It's a bit lower in height on the second pitch. His arm slot is also lower/normal(for Cahill) on the second pitch.  This shows, at least to me, that he DID stay square through the pitch and was on top of it the whole time. Both of these pitches were sinkers. The result? Well thanks to Brooks Baseball....

HIs first pitch to Pierre is the green square up-and-away, his second the red square, that third square was also a sinker that Pierre hit for a flyout.

Now cuppingmaster made an apt observation with the Brooks Baseball data. if you go and look at this at-bat and look at the spin data there is a wide discrepency between the first and third pitch. Brooks lists the three pitches as a fastball and two sinkers, but I think this may be been mis-interpreted. If you go and watch the first pitch the movement looks nothing like, in my opinion, his four-seam fast ball. However, the first and third pitch are listed as the same speed. My theory? When you have the arm drag and the pitcher is "under the ball" you do get bad wrist action, as cuppingmaster also suggested, and not only will the ball flatten out but it will not spin as much as normal.

I hope this clears up any questions/fuzzy details that I know my last post had. And please, feel free to ask questions. I will answer any and all.