Jeremy Hellickson May Be Ready To Unleash A New Weapon

Jeremy Hellickson joined the folks at his hometown paper in Des Moines and took some questions from fans. You can see a complete transcript at USA Today. The biggest news from the chat was when Hellboy was asked about his favorite pitch… my favorite pitch is the cutter ive been working on for a few years now that will start working here soon… and that is also the hardest to throw Our biggest concern with Hellickson in 2011 was that he appeared to get too fancy around the strikezone. Rather than depend on hitters swinging-and-missing, he was trying to hit the corner with every pitch. And as a result, the number of walks he allowed soared. And to us, that seemed to show that Hellickson had lost a little confidence in his ability to attack batters. Hellickson also struggled against lefties in 2011. His xFIP versus left-handed batters was more than 2.00 higher versus lefties (5.76) than righties (3.62). To show you how bad that is, consider that Andy Sonnanstine had a better...