Dugout Chat: Nolan Hoffman flourishing with new throwing motion
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Nolan Hoffman came to the mound for a routine bullpen session with his head coach when he was hit with an unexpected instruction.
“Try throwing it underhand,” head coach Rob Childress told him.
“What do you mean,” replied a confused Hoffman. “Like softball?”
It was late in the Aggies’ fall schedule with winter break fast approaching, and Hoffman had been having a brutal fall to that point. He was struggling to command any of his pitches, his velocity was significantly down from what he was used to and he looked nothing like the imposing 6-4 righty who set the school record for strikeouts over two seasons at Hutchinson Community College in Kansas.
Hoffman was struggling mightily to the tune of a 12 ERA and an inflated 2.79 WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched). His teammates and coaches ranked him as the worst pitcher in the program, and Childress says it was well deserved.
Childress had seen Hoffman struggle for weeks, and by watching him throw he could tell he might be a prime candidate to change his arm slot from an over-the-top delivery to a submarine-style motion. It is not at all common to undergo such a radical change to someone’s throwing motion — Childress remembers guiding Mike Sillman through a similar delivery overhaul at Nebraska in the early 2000s, but that’s about it — but it is used as a last resort for ineffective pitchers.
“You watch him play catch and the way his body works and the way his arm works, it’s probably the way he should have been throwing all along,” Childress says. “It was easy to make that change based on his performance in the fall — he certainly wasn’t going to help us doing what he did in the fall. To have almost three base runners allowed an inning isn’t a recipe for success.”
Hoffman, however, had never thrown like that outside of messing around in the backyards as a kid, which is probably why he was so caught off guard when Childress told him to experiment with the new arm angle.
“I threw a couple and he was like, ‘That looks really good, I think that’s your natural arm slot,’” Hoffman recalls in this week’s Dugout Chat. “I was kind of resistant at first because of the stereotype of dropping down like that. I didn’t want to do it at first but he said you can either commit to your team [and make the change] or not and don’t play.”
After a couple of pitches, some of the A&M hitters came over from the batting cages to watch. It didn’t take them long to realize he could be nasty, and that thought was confirmed when he showed off his new delivery in the intrasquad scrimmages.
“I saw him throw it in the ‘pen, and the ball was moving a good foot, foot-and-a-half, and I’m just wondering how anyone is supposed to hit that,” says A&M second baseman Michael Helman, who played with Hoffman for two years at Hutchinson. “His first outing when he was down low, I think he got seven ground balls.”
Helman, who also hails from Lincoln, Nebraska and is one of Hoffman’s roommates — along with fellow Lincoln native Logan Foster and Braden Shewmake — noticed Hoffman flip a switch over winter break. When Hoffman went home for the break, he hung out a lot with Helman and Foster and decided to make the attitude adjustment that Childress had been telling him was necessary in addition to his transition to being a sidewinder.
“I never thought that I would be the sidearm guy,” Hoffman says. “When Coach Childress told me I had to do it if I wanted to contribute to the team, it really made me think of myself as a teammate and realize that maybe I haven’t been that great of a teammate. I needed to back up and be a team guy.”
Says Helman: “I think he had a big-time attitude change from the fall. Just the way he gets up on the mound, there’s a different presence with him. Him talking to himself on the mound and having that crazy, psycho look to him, I’m sure it scares a lot of batters. That adds to his presence as well.”
Whenever Hoffman is on the mound it is obvious, watching him on television or at the ballpark, that he is talking to someone while he’s pitching. It remains unclear who exactly he is talking to, whether it is to himself, his catcher or the opposing hitter.
“I don’t even know, I’m chewing gum. I’m just talking to myself, I guess,” Hoffman says. “I don’t really know, I forget what I say. I probably just say ‘Stay focused, throw strikes,’ stuff like that.
“I know I’m doing it, but it kind of just happens. I don’t really tell myself to do it.”
He won’t even reveal to his own teammates what is actually happening when he gets in the zone as he toes the rubber.
“Everyone always asks what he says on the mound, and being his roommate he won’t even tell us. Anyone’s guess is as good as ours, it’s probably not PG but if it works, don’t change it,” says Foster, who played against Hoffman in high school. “He’s definitely saying something, and when we ask him about it he’ll just get this smirk and walk away without saying anything about it.”
Childress says his ultra-focused attitude on the mound elevates his performance.
“He’s very introverted, very quiet, very unassuming off the field, but when you put a ball in his hands, he gets himself going," Childress says. “You need to have an edge to you. To me, having an edge and a competitive spirit takes average guys and makes them good. It takes good guys and makes them great, and I think that’s the mode that Nolan’s in. He’s a very good pitcher, but with that edge and competitive spirit it makes him great and dominant.”
Whatever Hoffman is doing, it is working. He has adjusted nicely to his new arm slot, and he has been mostly flawless this season. He has not allowed an earned run in 18.1 innings, his strikeout-to-walk ratio is a superb 21:5 and opponents are hitting a paltry .176 off him.
“He’s certainly been the anchor of our bullpen,” Childress says. “Without a doubt, he has earned the most trust to date of any reliever on our team.”
Hoffman’s fastball sat in the mid-80s during the fall, but he added about 15 pounds to his frame over the break, and his velocity has increased since lowering his arm slot. He is able to generate tremendous sink on his two-seam fastball with his submarine arm angle, which complements nicely his sweeping slider and devastating changeup.
His changeup was always his best pitch when he threw over-the-top and, after a slight adjustment since the arm change, he feels comfortable with that offering again. As a result, he can get both right-handed and left-handed hitters out, which is not always the case with sidearm pitchers.
“With how much movement he has on the ball from down there and being able to throw 92, 93, it’s unheard of,” Foster says. “As a hitter, you want to have the fastball on the front of your mind, but a guy who can throw two more dirty pitches for strikes whenever he wants, it definitely makes it hard to hit.”
The Aggies might need to go to Hoffman in a close game in their upcoming three-game home series against No. 5 Ole Miss, which starts Thursday at 6 p.m. As for how much longer Hoffman can extend his scoreless streak, Helman is incredibly optimistic.
“Probably the rest of the season, honestly,” predicts Helman, who is hitting a team-leading .394. “He’s disgusting — I wouldn’t want to face him. He’s 89-92 and if you’re trying to sit on that and be on time against the fastball and then he throws that slider that just floats and sweeps all the way across the plate?
"You’re missing that every time.”
