Ryan Dempster and Vance Worley will not pitch during the Phillies-Cubs series. There will be no battle of the quivering gloves.
Dempster, who pitched Sunday, and Worley, who is on the 15-day DL due to right elbow inflammation, wiggle their gloves before they throw a pitch. They’re not nervous. They just don’t want to tip their pitches.
“You don’t want to get picked by the hitters,” Worley said. “That’s why I do what I do. Some guys do certain things. They will do stuff and the hitter will catch on, ‘Oh, he moves his hand around, that’s an offspeed pitch.’”
“When I was in college, I made the change because I had to. I noticed that guys picked up on what I was doing. Guys would sit back on my fastball and turn on it. Then I would go offspeed and they would sit back on it. Something had to give. I remember when I figured this out and I threw a fastball, and the batter was so surprised. You want to surprise the hitter. The key is that you keep them guessing and they guess wrong.”
The Vanimal has been going with the shaky glove since 2006.
“You do whatever it takes to win,” Worley said. “It’s the big time up here and everyone is looking for whatever advantage they can get. Everyone is looking at what everyone is doing. It’s beyond stealing signs.
“You don’t realize what you’re giving away. You can get away with that stuff in high school since it’s not very sophisticated, but when you’re in college and when you’re in the minors, you have to watch every little thing. When you get up here, you have to be on top of things or you could sink yourself before you even throw a pitch and you don’t want that.”
