The Reds drafted Kyle Lotzkar in the 2007 draft as a 17 year old with very good stuff and very scary mechanics. After the draft, I watched his scouting video and just couldn’t believe how a person could have the arm action that he had. You can look at it here. Try to make your arm do that (getting your elbow that much higher than your shoulder). I bet you can’t. I know I sure can’t. To me, and to many others, the arm action was screaming for an injury. Sure enough, Lotzkar has seen his fair share of injuries over the years. He has had Tommy John surgery and also broken his arm while pitching. Coming into the year, he had never thrown 50 innings in a season and had only thrown 111 innings since being drafted.
Last season the right hander spent the second half of the season pitching for the AZL Reds and Billings Mustangs. Having talked to someone inside the Reds organization, he had cleaned up his mechanics some. However, I ran across this photo in the Billings Gazette last season and while he clearly doesn’t have the same high arm action, there is still some hyperabduction going on where his elbow is getting higher than his shoulder when he loads before coming to the plate. So while there was some improvement, I still had my concerns about his future health.
This season Lotzkar had another set back in spring training. He wouldn’t make his season debut until June 14th. After he had pitched, I talked with someone who had seen him pitch about his mechanics and they too noted that they were cleaned up from the last time he was in Dayton. That didn’t tell me much though, as the last time he was in Dayton his mechanics were still quite extreme in terms of his hyperabduction. I had a chance to see him pitch online for his start on August 4th. To me, I still saw a slight bit of hyperabduction, but it was a minimal amount. It certainly has been a steady improvement for him over the past few seasons while coming back from several injuries.
Tuesday I was able to head up to Dayton to watch his start live and in person. I took my camera with me and took plenty of video of him, from multiple angles, so I could examine just how much his arm action has improved. I came away impressed. If you haven’t looked at the two linked images above, I would suggest doing so before looking at the image below so you can see just how far he has come from. Here is a frame by frame breakdown of what his arm action now looks like.
As you can see, if there is any issue going on at this point in time, it is incredibly small. This is a good sign for both Lotzkar and the Reds. Stuff wise, he is still quite strong with a slightly above average fastball, a strong breaking ball and a solid change up. If he can remain healthy, he could be a large part of the Reds future. I have a lot more faith that he can remain healthy now than I ever have before. Obviously, throwing a baseball always poses a risk because of the nature that it entails, but I believe that the changes that Lotzkar has made to his mechanics are clearly going to help reduce the risk that he finds himself with another serious arm injury.