Jake Peavy thinks he has figured it out

Here’s Jake Peavy not making sense when talking about people criticizing his early season performance:

''I didn’t hear all these critics talking last year, when I did what I did after about the same amount of starts that I’ve made this year. [When I was] 3-0 with a low ERA, nobody was talking then.”

There’s a reason for that, Jake: you were 3-0 with a low ERA. Now you are not. I know that seems unfair and everything, but that’s kind of how criticism works.

But maybe it stops now, because Peavy thinks he has figured out the source of his troubles. And unlike the stuff about the criticism, this does make a whole lot of sense:

''If you go look at my delivery at the start of last year to what it was before my last start, it doesn’t look like the same guy. A big part of that is my legs. For some reason, I quit using my legs. It’s pretty easy to think why.’'

The reason is that his big injury last year was an ankle injury, and Peavy thinks that he’s been unconsciously favoring his lower body since coming back, thereby screwing up his overall mechanics.

Like I said, that makes sense. If you read a lot about pitching and pitching mechanics, it’s amazing how little you hear about guys’ arms and how much you hear about legs. Sure, arm angles get token mentions, but it’s all about the base. The foundation, the kick, the push-off, the stride, the plant and the landing.

Peavy goes tonight against Rich Harden and the Rangers, so we’ll see if the diagnosis has been followed by a cure.