Quote Originally Posted by jojo View Post
How often in the history of pitching has a pitcher gained command and movement by throwing harder? It's counterintuitive to argue that a major league starting pitcher is likely to undergo that transformation successfully. That was the point. No one is arguing that they don't want it to happen. It's just that wanting it to happen doesn't make it likely to....this is a belly that one should need to poke twice before accepting as reality.
I think it's very possible that leAke has not been throwing his hardest in order to improve his command. With more experience and practise I think it's very possible that he can throw closer to his maximum without materially decreasing his command, and although he might lose some movement, the fact his fastball and quite possibly secondary pitches will be thrown harder it might before difficult to tee up on.

Mike leake is not a robot. He's a 25 year old pitcher that has been earning at the highest level. He might be reaching the comfort level in the MLB that experimentation could allow him to Improve.

He certainly wouldn't be the first 25 year old pitcher that doesn't throw more than 95 to show improvement. Also it's not like his command is elite elite. He came up advertised as a command gut and has shown well. But he's not out of this world like a sheets, shields, Halliday, etc. a guy with his reputation might be able to take the leap from having good command to elite command. He obviously doesn't have the stuff to be a Halliday, but he doesn't have to be to show real improvement.