Outman's ways are new to him but success is not

By Tony Zonca

Let’s play a game of what-if, as in what if a nationally ranked high jumper using the old straddle technique decided to switch to the so-called Fosbury flop conventional style shortly before the Olympic trials.

What if a straight-on kicker, eying a job in the NFL, suddenly opted to convert to the customary side-winding, soccer style of kicking.

To take it one step further, what if a promising golfer, trying to win a spot on the PGA tour, turned in the belly putter he had been using for a dozen years for a standard thin blade.

You think they would struggle with the newly adopted approach to their chosen profession? No doubt.

Then there is Phillies lefty Josh Outman. Just three years ago he made a drastic switch in his mechanical approach to pitching, abandoning a completely unorthodox style for the mostly conventional one you see practiced today by the 23-year-old prospect.

The former method, conceived by his father, Fritz, was designed in the interest of preserving young Josh’s pitching health.

Without getting technical, and in the interest of being brief, we can describe the former delivery as looking like somebody trying to scratch the point of his left shoulder with his right hand extended behind his head.

Got it?

For a dozen years, or since he was about 9 years old, Outman pitched that way . . . and thrived, too, although his high school coach was so suspicious of his throwing motion he wouldn’t allow him near a mound his sophomore year. Then, the winter before his junior year at Division II Central Missouri State, realizing that baseball scouts are suspicious of anything that strays from the accepted practice, Outman decided to join the ranks of the pitching fraternity. He would go straight.

“My dad taught me how to hit and how to pitch,” Outman said, a not infrequent revelation by many pro ballplayers. “He’s the one who taught me how to play the game. I wouldn’t say he was thrilled (when I made the change). (But) I felt it was something I had to do if I was going to get drafted.”

Now, three years after being selected in the 10th round of the June 2005 draft by the Phillies, and after moving up to No. 4 on their prospects list, Josh Outman remains a work in progress.

Sometimes he feels as though he has learned the craft of pitching by using Cliff notes. At other times he has felt like a guy peaking into a loaded cannon.

All of which belies the fact that he has been so successful. The numbers don’t lie: In 2006 he was stellar during Class A Lakewood’s march to a South Atlantic League title when he went 14-6 with a 2.95 ERA. Last year he went 12-7 with a 2.99 ERA between high Class A Clearwater and Reading. He averaged 9.9 strikeouts per nine innings pitched over those two seasons.

“For a pitcher at any point in his career, it’s still a work in progress,” Outman reasoned. “It’s never going to be easy. There is always going to be something to think about, there’s always going to be something to work on. So for me there’s just a lot more to think about and work on.”

Outman throws four pitches – a 90-94 mph fastball, an 83-84 late-biting slider, a changeup and a rediscovered curveball he had abandoned late last year and for much of spring training.

“I think that he is a guy who is going to pitch in the big leagues for us before very long,” Mike Arbuckle, Phillies assistant general manager, told MLB.com. “His stuff is definitely very good quality, and for him, it is just a matter of being more consistent throwing strikes and commanding his secondary pitches. When he shows us that he can throw strikes consistently and command his secondary stuff, then I think he will be in the big leagues.”

Outman is the third-youngest pitcher in the Phillies organization to reach the high minors this season, following Carlos Carrasco and Fabio Castro, both current teammates.

Even with his former unconventional approach, Outman was easily familiar with pitching success. At Forest Park (Mo.) Community College he was one of the best junior-college pitchers in the country. At CMS, he was an outstanding two-way performer for one of the finest Division II programs in the NCAA.

Yet, there was no escaping the not so incidental bias flowing from the disbelieving hoards of scouts who gathered at both schools to catch a look at this kid with the peculiar delivery. After all, Missouri is the show-me state. The numbers didn’t lie; however, their eyes did.

So far this season, Outman has been mostly terrific. He carried an 0-1 record and a skimpy 1.06 ERA over his first three starts, with 19 punch-outs over 17 innings, only to run into trouble in his next start in Connecticut.

He continues to mow hitters down, but he’s also walking more than he should, too.

“I don’t like to make excuses, but I know I can have a lot better command,” Outman observed. “But at the same time it’s difficult to go out and compete and compete well when you don’t know entirely what you’re doing when you get on the mound. It’s very uncomfortable.”

Outman received a huge confidence boost in the fall when he received an unexpected invitation to pitch for World-Cup winning Team USA, for whom he was 1-1 with a 1.50 ERA.

“It was kind of a whirlwind experience,” he said. “It was really amazing; not just the international experience of going to another country, but to play with the caliber of players, top to bottom, on the team. Every player that was there was the cream of the crop from his organization. Then just to be able to represent the United States in a way that I’m capable was exciting.

“I was the only pitcher to take a loss in Taiwan, but I pitched a good game against Chinese Taipei in the last game of our pool play to give us the No. 1 seed in championship play. There were about 25,000 fans there with thunder sticks and horns. It was by far the loudest crowd I had ever played in front of. It was really exciting.”

And so, here he is, Josh Outman, throwing darts without the feathers, playing jacks while wearing oven mitts . . . an admitted work in progress, but having uncommon success nonetheless.

As for the rest of us, it’s going to be fun to watch him when he finally gets the hang of this thing called pitching. 

This story was posted on April 23, 2008