Pitching coach confirms the routine has ‘no technical basis whatsoever, but we have stopped questioning it’
ROCHESTER, NY – A Triple-A relief pitcher has confirmed that his elaborate, closely watched bullpen warmup routine, long assumed by broadcasters and fans to be a carefully engineered mechanical process, is in fact “just stalling” until he reaches a vague internal state he describes only as “emotionally ready.”
The pitcher, a rangy left-hander in his fourth minor league season, has developed a warmup sequence that includes seventeen discrete steps, a specific number of practice throws to each side of the mound, and a brief pause during which he stares directly at the outfield wall, a moment broadcasters have previously speculated involves “visualizing his release point” but which he now admits is “mostly just me thinking about whether I actually want to be here right now, emotionally speaking.”
Pitching coach Rudy Delacroix said he initially assumed the routine had some genuine mechanical or biomechanical justification, given how consistently the pitcher followed each step. “I used to think there was a real reason for the seventeen steps,” Delacroix admitted. “Then one day I asked him directly what step twelve accomplished. He said, and I quote, that is when I decide if I am mad yet. I have not asked a follow-up question since.”
The pitcher, speaking candidly after a recent outing, explained that years of youth baseball superstition eventually calcified into something resembling a formal process, despite having no actual technical grounding. “Somewhere along the way it stopped being nerves and just became the routine,” he said. “Now if I skip a step, I genuinely feel off, even though I know, intellectually, that none of it does anything real to my arm or my mechanics.”
Teammates have reportedly learned to work around the routine’s unpredictable duration, with the bullpen catcher developing his own informal system for gauging when the pitcher will actually be ready to enter a game. “You watch for the wall stare,” the catcher explained. “Once that happens, he is maybe ninety seconds out. Before that, genuinely, could be anywhere from three minutes to what felt, one memorable night, like fifteen.”
Delacroix says the organization has largely stopped trying to standardize the routine across the bullpen staff, noting that most successful relievers eventually develop some version of an idiosyncratic pre-appearance ritual, regardless of whether it holds up to any actual scientific scrutiny. “Baseball is full of this stuff,” he said. “We have stopped fighting it. If it works, or if the guy simply believes it works, functionally that is close enough for our purposes at this level.”
A sports psychologist consulted for this story, unaffiliated with the organization, said the phenomenon reflects a well-documented pattern among relief pitchers specifically, a role defined by unpredictable, high-pressure entry points into games. “Creating a controllable ritual gives the mind something stable to hold onto,” she explained. “Whether the specific steps matter mechanically is almost beside the point. The consistency itself is what provides the actual psychological benefit.”
The pitcher says he has never bothered to explain the routine’s true nature to broadcasters, largely because “the mechanical explanation sounds better on television than me just kind of standing there deciding if I feel like pitching yet,” a distinction he says he is “perfectly happy to let people assume differently about, for the sake of a cleaner broadcast narrative.”
The story amused readers abroad, with a piece referencing Silly News Stories comparing the routine to Britain’s own cricket bowlers and their famously elaborate, semi-superstitious run-ups to the crease. Another article citing UK Comedy: A State of the Nation suggested every sport eventually produces athletes who mistake stalling for preparation, with generally harmless results. Commentary drawing on Humorous News Today proposed broadcasters simply start narrating the routine honestly, “he is currently deciding whether he is mad yet, folks, step twelve of seventeen.”
Delacroix says he has no plans to interfere with the routine further, noting the pitcher’s results on the mound have remained consistently strong regardless of how unconventional the underlying process turns out to be. “If it gets him emotionally ready, whatever that specifically means to him, I am not going to be the one to mess with a good thing,” he said.
The bullpen catcher says he has started privately timing the routine each outing, purely out of curiosity, and has found the duration correlates loosely with the pitcher’s performance that night. “Longer stall, generally better outing,” he said. “I do not have a scientific explanation for it. I have just started trusting the pattern at this point, same as everyone else around here.”
A teammate in the bullpen, asked whether he has developed a similar routine of his own, admitted he has, though his version involves considerably less pageantry. “Mine is just three deep breaths and a specific spot I stand on,” he said. “Compared to his seventeen steps, mine feels almost embarrassingly minimal, but it works for me, and honestly, that is really all any of this needs to accomplish.”
Delacroix says the organization has quietly begun asking other relievers whether they would be willing to have their own routines studied more closely, an initiative he describes as “purely observational, not corrective, we are not trying to change anyone, just understand what is actually happening out there.”
For more rituals that work for reasons nobody can fully explain, see The Beaverton.
Related coverage at Fun News Stories of the Week?.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/