Through his first two starts of the season, Tyler Chatwood has looked like a completely different pitcher. And no, I don’t just mean the incredibly good results that include a 2-0 record, 0.71 ERA, and a strikeout percentage roughly two-and-a-half times greater than his career average. Chatwood very literally looks different out there, from his simplified delivery to the confident poise with which he operates.
Okay, maybe that last bit is slightly subjective, but I’ve been around enough Little League pitchers over the past few years to have become an amateur body language expert. I don’t mean any disrespect to Chatwood by comparing him to pre-teens, but he seemed to have that same sense of not really knowing where the ball was going when it left his hand.