Neal Huntington demoting Tom Gorzelanny to AAA has everyone talking around the game - quietly, but talking intensely all the same.  

Pirates fans justified the demotion believing Gorzelanny needs to be more competitive and a stint in AAA might do him some good.  Baseball execs to the game’s foot soldiers seem to believe the Pirates think his labrum is fried and are questioning the demotion expecting him to be immediately put on the DL.

And one can only wonder if SFX Baseball, Gorzelanny’s agent, has dispatched their top dog to Pittsburgh to demand an explicit explaination from Huntington considering Gorzy’s service time and handling. 

One NL scout and one analyst I spoke to both told me the same thing - his velocity is down and that usually spells shoulder problems.  But is his velocity down? 

Here are 1,781 fastballs Gorzelanny threw from June 3, 2007 to July 4th, 2008, as identified by pitchF/X.  For 2007 data, I used spin and velocity to determine the pitch type.  You can click the image to see it full size.

If he lost any velocity at all over that time, is was an insignificant amount, although at the top end he seems to have lost 1 mph or so (too much noise to count on that though).  However he did have three games in 2008 where he clearly lost velocity - that horrifying April 30th game this year and then the back end of the June 7th game and his next start June 12th where he was hung out.  Probably both dead arm periods.

But the mean 88 mph fastball Gorzelanny threw over that one year is indeed 4+ mph lower than his 2005 and 2006 mean - the scout and analyst are indeed correct.  But there is so much noise in the “why” the velocity is down that we can’t assume he’s been pitching with a shoulder problem since 2006 - that’s just nuts.  Mechanical changes, pitch type changes, arm slots changes, game management and receiver changes, and lots of other factors all could influence that.

As one scout showed me, Gorzelanny isn’t finishing like he did in 2005 and 2006.  By that I mean, he’s not driving toward the plate as fluidly/forcefully as he once did.  And I mentioned yesterday I saw a slight recoil off his plant foot leading to arm slot variations. 

Nobody knows the “whys” except Tom Gorzelanny and, perhaps, Jim Colborn.  Colborn started the tweaking, Andrews then made his own tweaks, and then tweaked his tweak, but nothing has helped Gorzelanny’s command and efficiency.

So is he hurt?  Who knows - as I said, we’ll find out early next week when this all comes to head.  There is no way Gorzelanny and his agent are going to accept a demotion without a valid reason even though he has options.  There are cardinal rules in the game, although they are broken everywhere occaisionally.

If the Pirates don’t believe he’s hurt and he was demoted to pitch every five days under Ray Searage’s instruction, that could only be a Huntington no confidence vote on Jeff Andrews, which is overdue in many people’s opinions.  Perhaps this will be the start of Huntington shaking things up? 

This story is far from over… it’s just starting.  What happens might impact Neal Huntington’s success as GM. 

For now we’ll assume the obvious - he was removed from the rotation because of some need, that he was demoted to Indy, and he has looked unhealthy while being forced to take a few beatings along the way from the Pirates field staff.  And we’ll assume the demotion is the only acceptable way Neal Huntington was willing to reduce Gorzelanny’s workload.  Shutting him down wasn’t an option.

Oh, and Gorzy is one pissed off dude. And he should be with these types of statements:

“Russell and Huntington stressed that health is not an issue with Gorzelanny, who had some shoulder discomfort early in spring training.

“Our medical people feel he’s healthy,” Huntington said. “This is a humbling game. It’s a tough lesson Tom’s going through.”

 Anybody else see that GM humble pie cooking?