SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Rockies’ pitcher David Hale is an anomaly. Not many players would display the persistence he’s shown after the three injuries he sustained over the past year. Headed into his fourth year of big league service, the Princeton graduate is hoping his rehabilatation and the changes he’s made will translate into a bounce back season.
Before the 2015 season started, the right-hander went down with a left oblique injury. After rehab he was promoted to the Rockies from Triple-A Albuquerque but soon after was on the disabled list with a left groin strain on July 9. After a brief comeback stint in September, he felt he was back. But, a hamstring injury sidelined him for the first week of spring training.
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“I’ve never had anything like this before. I work out a lot, I stay in shape, it’s just kind of frustrating having it,” Hale said. “Thankfully they’re not related to my arm and my arm feels great but I’ve just been having these little tweak things.”
He is also trying to correct his delivery, which made him fall toward first base instead of toward home plate, part of the reason he went 5-5 with a 6.09 ERA in 12 starts last season after the Rockies acquired him in a trade with the Braves in January.
“Everything has been more in a line instead of being rotational,” he said. “I’ve always done it so it’s so hard to change that. But I did a lot of work in the offseason and tried to make it second nature and repetitive without thinking about it.”
That’s not to say Hale doesn’t enjoy putting his mind to work. After graduation from high school in Marietta, Georgia, he elected to go to Princeton and pursue a degree in economics.
“It was one of those things where it was like, why not have the best opportunity possible in case baseball doesn’t work out? How can you pass that up?” Hale said. “It was the number one school in the country so it wasn’t something I was going to let go.”
What he didn’t expect was for his childhood dream to come true. He played mostly centerfield at Princeton but he also pitched. When pro scouts thought Hale had a better chance to make it to the next level as a pitcher, he jumped at it.
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His hometown Braves selected him in the third round of the 2009 amateur draft and Hale left school, but he remained determined to get his degree. He went back during two consecutive fall semesters to finish his work toward a degree. His final project was a 65-page thesis trying to statistically show there may be precursors to arm injuries in pitchers.
“It was way too much work to let go,” he said. “It was one of those things where if I didn’t go back immediately, I wouldn’t have remembered everything I needed to.”
While managing to complete his degree, Hale spent four years in the minor leagues as a hard thrower without much movement on his fastball. He knew he had to change something. He worked to add a sinker and changeup to his repertoire and got his first callup to the Braves in 2013.
“It was one of those things where these guys are so good, if they knew a 100 mph fastball was coming at them, they could hit it,” he said. “So you have to make the ball the move, 91 or 92 with sink was way more valuable then 95 hard and straight.”
Just like his new finesse pitches, Hale now leans on his intelligence and the habits he learned at Princeton to try and gain an edge.
“I do a lot of studying of the batters before,” he said. “There is a way to go about it intellectually but at the same time when you’re out there you’ve almost got to take it away and go at it and use the studying you did before and just take reaction out there.”
If he can stay healthy, then his ability to add pitches and change his delivery might pay dividends sooner than expected.
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“Hopefully this year I don’t have to think that much about mechanical stuff so I can just go out there and throw strikes and attack the batters like I have been,” he said.
