posted on Friday, June 29, 2007 11:33 PM
by
Jim
A first look at Lance Broadway
Lance Broadway never pitched in any game I saw during Spring Training, so this was my chance to see him in action. Here is my general scouting report:
Delivery: Nothing to it. Pretty much straight overhand, which is why it'd be a good idea for him to develop a two-seam fastball.
Repertoire: His fastball ranged from 88-91. I saw a couple at 92, and one at 87. He struck out a couple guys with the 91-m.p.h. variety late in the game, and nobody truly made him pay for fastballs up in the zone. The only stinger was snagged by a leaping Earl Snyder at third.
His curveball sat on 81 m.p.h., and it had a tight break that resembled a slider from the side. He had some success getting some bad swings on ones that started away.
His changeup came and went. It was in the 77-79 range, and it looked pretty good coming out of his hand. The Chiefs swung through it plenty the first time around, but they adjusted the second time on.
Command: When Broadway missed, he missed down in the zone. That's preferable in and of itself; the problem was that he missed quite a bit, walking four, including the No. 9-hitting Ray Olmedo. In other words, Wiki Gonzalez's chest protector got quite the workout. Broadway did throw one wild pitch.
He struck out eight, but chances are he's not going to experience that regularly with his stuff. He also needed 117 pitches to get through seven. It'd help if he only got more groundballs -- he only induced five all night, compared to seven flyouts. The good thing is that Chiefs hitters didn't really crush anything -- I counted only two line drives all night, and the other one, hit directly to Brian Anderson, hovered a little.
Defense: He handled two of five chances on the night. On the ones he missed, a comebacker got through the box, another one deflected off his leg, and then he misfired after barehanding a bunt with two outs, which allowed two runs to score.
Video:
Photos: Here's Broadway's delivery, as best as I could put it together with separate frames. I did the same thing for
Gio Gonzalez in the spring, and I'll do the same thing with Gavin Floyd.
Let me know if there's anything I could improve upon for the next one.