Player Name: Travis Bruinsma
School: Connetquot
Position: RHP
Travis is a senior pitcher for Connetquot that is headed to Dowling in the fall.
He has a unique delivery, but it is part of the reason he is difficult to hit. He begins his windup with his glove around the ball and looks down at his feet as a timing mechanism. He regains focus on the target as he is approaching the balance point. He has a very high leg kick–above the letters. His back leg is slightly bent and his front foot is parallel to the ground. Here is where his delivery gets funky. If you pause the video at 00:15 you can see. His posture is nearly straight up due to an extremely short stride. This is something that sacrifices velocity and, generally speaking, makes it difficult to locate down in the strike zone. He does not have a control issue, because he has used this motion for his career but it is definitely far from textbook. His arm circle is short–he throws more like a catcher than a pitcher in that sense. The arm angle is high 3/4. He doesn’t get much extension and he falls off to the first base side. Again, despite the fact that the motion is unique, it has benefited him in terms of success.
In his April 27 start, he operated mainly with an 84-86 MPH fastball and a sharp curveball. The curve is tight and has 12-6 drop. He showed great confidence with it, throwing it on basically any count and he used it to get ahead of hitters on a few occasions.
He threw six innings while striking out nine batters. Most of his strikeouts on curveballs were in the lower quadrant of the strike zone or out of the zone entirely. This shows he knows how to get hitters to chase and his success should translate to the next level.
It was surprising to see how well he hit the bottom of the strike zone while virtually standing up straight during the release point.
Bruinsma has been very effective this season and Connetquot will be relying on him in the postseason if they plan on having a deep run.
