Chicago Cubs: Carl Edwards Jr. and his newfound tap dance

Since his debut in 2015, Carl Edwards Jr. has shown flashes of brilliance –and mediocrity. In an attempt to be more consistent, Edwards decided to change the mechanics of his delivery this past winter; will it work?

A skinny kid who had the knack for slinging a baseball, Carl Edwards Jr. has often made scouts and fans drool. While his slender frame was once a question mark as a starter, his stuff and execution (at times) as a reliever has mostly silenced doubts about his viability as a Major League reliever.  What has come into question, however, is just how close he will ever get to his ceiling.

No longer the 23-year-old who debuted for the Cubs four years ago, everyone wants to know if this will be the year that the “Stringbean Slinger” finally puts everything together for an entire season and asserts himself as the setup man or closer his stuff says he can be. If this goal is going to have a chance to come to fruition, Edwards will have to cut down on the five walks per nine innings he has averaged as a big leaguer.

In an attempt to calm his mechanics and make his delivery more consistent, Edwards has added a pause to his delivery, one that is quite reminiscent to Dodgers’ All-Stars Kenley Jansen and Clayton Kershaw. Edwards himself admitted he specifically studied Jansen’s delivery and mimicked him in a mirror over the offseason. Will it work?

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Even a pitcher who does most or all of his pitching in the stretch rather than the wind-up (as most relievers do), can often have issues in the gathering phase or initial part of the delivery. There are so many moving parts, even in an ostensibly simple and repeatable motion, that things can go haywire very quickly and very easily.

Relievers, because of the nature of their job, have even more variance in their performance because they don’t get the time in a game or days off to fix mechanical issues or delivery problems.

What Jansen has done is created a mechanism to calm or slow his motion and gather himself before he propels his body forward with each pitch. What Edwards is hoping to do by mimicking Jansen is use the tap or pause in his motion to get everything centered, balanced, and stable before pushing off and going home with his motion.

As someone who throws hard effortlessly with natural movement, it makes perfect sense for Edwards, as he doesn’t rely on overexerting himself or any herky-jerky deception.  Being as “quiet” as possible is to his advantage, and no doubt, he feels this pause will allow him to do it more routinely.

The one possible drawback, however, is that this pause is, essentially, limiting his fluidity and could potentially lead to an injury as his momentum and drive aren’t entirely on his legs and hips now, and it could perhaps put more stress directly on his spindly right arm.  He’s also not used to this wind-up, and any time you change something after 20 years of doing it one way, there’s always the possibility of an issue or two. Then again, he has had a pretty calm and deliberate motion in the past, even without the pause.

As Carl himself said back in 2016 when things started coming together for him, “I know what I have right now and I know I’ve got more inside of me- that’s what keeps me driven all the way. Hard work is paying off, but it’s not done. It won’t pay off completely until I’ve been in this league for 15 years or so.” It seems that Edwards was not just blowing smoke in a proverbial way, but instead wants to continue striving to blow smoke right by Major League hitters consistently.  Hopefully, this pause and gather will work, and he will use this as a tap, hop, and a jump into the closer role in 2020.

As Edwards figures out a way to rein in his electric stuff, he’s hoping that this change to his routine will allow Cubs’ skipper Joe Maddon to count on him and trust him in the most critical of high-leverage situations. So do I, so do I.