Why does it seem when we have a top notch lefty coming in like Gabby and Callie they are so wild and mostly high do you think? Seems these tall ladies do well at other places but not with us. That exception is the great Monica!
I think if Turner had not been relied on as the ace to start the season last year, she would be viewed differently right now.
Gabby developed some sort of mental block in her pitching motion. She looked unstoppable warming up in the bullpen, was very very good in practice, but would completely collapse in the game. I think they tried every trick in the book with sports psychologists and in working on her mechanics, but it just didn’t take. She improved some at Oklahoma State, but is still fairly wild and not the dominant player everybody expected out of high school.
To answer your question about left-handers specifically though, a big part of it is lefties look unstoppable in high-level travel ball because there are so few of them that most teams never face one in practice. By the time the lineup figures it out, it’s the last time through the order and then they don’t see that player again. At the college level, everybody has seen a lefty to some extent, and they have hours and hours of video on the ones that they face.
Monica was great, absolutely would never take anything away from her or what she accomplished, but the reality is if she played today where every opponent has every pitch she throws on high-def video, she’s not as dominant as she was back in the early 2000s. She would still be the best pitcher in the game, but it wouldn’t be dominant like she was. Neither would Finch or Osterman. It doesn’t take anything away from them, because they would still be considered the best, it just wouldn’t look the same way it did then.