Name: Brad Camarda
School: Hills West
Position: RHP
Brad is a RHP that has a very smooth and sound delivery. He begins with his hands shoulder height in the windup. He takes a small step back as he prepares for the balance point. He looks down at his feet as a timing mechanism as prior to the leg kick. He lifts his leg letter-high at the balance point. His back leg is stiff and his toe is parallel to the ground. He utilizes his back leg well to drive off the rubber. He lands on line with home plate, his front leg is slightly bent but he straighten it out at the point of release. His eyes are not on home plate at release point, but by that point he is already locked in. He gets good extension on his pitches and finishes balanced and facing home plate.
In his March 30 start, he was virtually lights out. He worked mainly with a two-seam fastball that was in the mid 80s. Whether it was because of it being his first start, Camarda through almost exclusively fastballs. He threw a change up occasionally. He did spike some pitches, and that may have been the change up that he had trouble gripping. The command of the fastball was very strong. It was clear he knew the opposition was chasing high fastballs because he used it very often. The umpire was not providing him with the low strike, so it made sense that he took advantage of the opposition’s aggressiveness.
In the inning that he allowed two runs, he should have gotten out unscathed but the second baseman failed to cover second on a routine double play which allowed all the runners to reach safely. The following batter hit a medium-hard groundball through the box to score two runs. He responded by getting the next batter to pop up to the SS. He rarely threw the ball in the dirt.
He also utilized the slide step often, and had no trouble spotting the fastball on those instances. He had a couple different ways of haulting the running game–the primary way was holding the ball longer. He had a very accurate throw on pickoffs, but has slow feet which allowed all the runners the time to get back.
