Max Kranick was just a few days into spring training and his shoulder was hurting again.
Why is it hurting again? It can’t. Not now. Not this year.
The Pirates’ right-hander had dealt with this for a while. Shoulder troubles ended his season early in 2019, limiting him to just 20 starts. It was nagging him long before he was shut down in August, and he hoped it would go away during the offseason. It didn’t.
“When the game would come, it would go away with the adrenaline,” Kranick was telling me. “But after …”
It was a recurring theme for Kranick. When he was on the mound, he pitched quite well, recording a 3.34 ERA over his first four seasons in the minors. He was often injured though, missing large chunks of the 2019 and 2018 seasons, putting a damper on his promise as a pitcher.
Kranick was selected in the 11th round in the 2016 draft, but that late selection was due to concerns about if he would sign, not his talent. Baseball America listed him as one of their top 100 draft prospects that year, but teams weren’t confident that they could convince him to forgo his commitment to Virginia. The Pirates ended up taking that risk on the third day of the draft and inked him for $300,000. Only the top four draft picks they signed received more than that.
Despite the injuries, Kranick steadily rose through the system and was ranked as the Pirates’ 23rd-best prospect before 2020, per Baseball America, but the ascent was slowed down. This season was going to be a big year for him since it was his roster year. He needed to prove to the Pirates that he was worthy of a spot on their 40-man roster, or at least audition for other clubs to potentially take him in the Rule 5 draft. If he didn’t, the odds of him reaching the majors would take a serious hit.
He had the results and promising pitches, but he needed to show more this season. He needed to pitch more. He needed to last.
“There’s going to be no room for me if I’m on the IL come every July,” Kranick said.
As it turned out, there was no minor-league season. In spite of that, Kranick showed something to the new Pirates’ regime during the quarantine phase of the season and was invited to the satellite camp in Altoona, Pa. On Nov. 20, he was added to the roster.
“We got to see him a lot and get to know him,” Ben Cherington said after adding Kranick. “[He’s] a young, big, strong physical guy who we think has a chance to start."
Over the course of a couple months, Kranick went from an often-injured A-ball pitcher to a prospect the Pirates would not dare risk losing to other teams. To get there, it took completely retooled throwing mechanics, a mechanical engineer, a homemade pitcher’s mound, high-tech equipment to track his spin and movement, weighted baseballs and a belief that this could be the breakout year he needed, pandemic or not.
That journey started with that chance conversation with a very newly hired pitching coach while he had a sore shoulder in spring training.
Since the pandemic drastically shortened the camp, Kranick only ended up throwing a few innings down in Bradenton. After one of those outings, he was approached by the coach, who was trying to introduce himself to the pitchers within the organization.
He asked if Kranick’s shoulder hurt. Kranick was taken aback for a moment before saying that it did. How did he know?
“I used to throw a similar way,” he said.
A recently retired player, the coach and Kranick talked about some drills, some ideas that could help. During the shutdown, Kranick and he would text or call almost every day, building up shoulder strength and improving his stuff.
“It was a career changer, meeting Victor Black.”
FADE TO BLACK
At the turn of the decade, Black was considered one of the Pirates’ top pitching prospects, not too far behind guys like Gerrit Cole, Jameson Taillon and Tony Watson. Radar guns clocked him at 101 mph in the minors, and it appeared he was the Pirates’ closer in waiting.
After a brief cameo in the majors, the Pirates traded him to the Mets in August 2013 in the deal that brought back Marlon Byrd and John Buck. He made a couple trips to the injured list the next year, but the results were really good, finishing with a 2.60 ERA. Again, he seemed positioned to be a key contributor to a team that would go to the World Series the following year.
He never threw another pitch in the majors. Shoulder tendinitis sidelined him for a good chunk of the season, and when he returned, he wasn’t the same, recording an ERA over 7.00 in Class AAA.
He was released later that year. He bounced around some independent leagues and had a brief stint in the Giants’ system, but by this point, his fastball was gone.
He wasn’t going to accept that. There had to be a way for him to be an effective pitcher. So he started working out in different training facilities, looking for what he described as an “insurance policy” for his career. If he could figure out what was wrong, he believed he could have a future in baseball, either as a player or coach.
“When a pitcher has lingering arm problems, they’re looking for whatever they can find to solve it, because it’s screwing with the one thing they want to do, throw,” Black said.
His search brought him to PFA, another facility, in California at the suggestion of his friend, Joe Kelly. The Dodgers’ reliever had injury problems early in his career, but had gone years without a trip to the injured list. That was enough for Black to add it to his tour.
There, he met Dave Coggin, who suggested his delivery had unnecessary motions that were adding stress to his arm. They simplified some things and Black took the mound.
It might not have been an 'A-ha!' moment, but after two years of looking, Black found something.
“In the first 30 minutes, I realized I could change how I throw and still get what I want out of my arm,” Black said.
Black gave independent ball one more shot in 2019, but retired as a player shortly after. It was too late for him, but he finally understood what hampered him throughout his career. It was time for his next chapter as a coach.
“The reason why I got into this was to help others avoid what I went through, which was basically being hurt for half my career,” Black said.
Black spent more time at PFA to better understand arm health. Once he became a certified coach through them, he started his own business, the Arm Doc, in Amarillo, Texas, focusing on youth and high school baseball. Around the same time, he and his wife found out they were going to become parents.
After years of looking for answers, things were going right. All that was left was a return to pro ball, and he went to the Pirates, asking those who were still there from when he was drafted, to give him a shot.
“I want to be outside,” Black said, recalling how his pitch went. “I’m tired of being under fluorescent lights indoors. Get me out on a beautiful field again.”
The Pirates did have something open, an assistant pitching coach position for their Gulf Coast League team. Black took it, liking that the season will be shorter and there will be less travel involved, meaning he could be at home more.
It also meant that he would be in spring training. Cue his encounter with Kranick and the conversation about his shoulder.
“I feel it, dude,” Black told Kranick. “I know what it’s like.”
Black had a roadmap to build up shoulder strength and a player who was all-in on trying to find a way to get better.
“The main focus was just to simplify throwing,” Kranick said. “Breaking things down. Move in much more similar, consistent ways.”
PIRATES
Max Kranick pitching in the satellite camp.
'NIGHT AND DAY'
The two started to work on eliminating parts of Kranick’s early motions. Black's problem was he had two big, unnecessary motions in his windup, one to his glove side and then a big arm swing. He was looking for extra juice on his heater, but it was really just creating extra stress on his right arm.
Kranick had the same mindset in the past. Before he shut down in 2019, he tried to mask a drop in his fastball by ramping up his motion, trying to create a little more life.
“It wasn’t my best decision, for sure,” he said in retrospect.
Instead, he made it one motion, straight back. Black’s metaphor is to pretend that you are going to punch someone. If you want to pop them in the nose, you wouldn’t have an exaggerated windup. You’d pull back and go forward.
Not only does that remove unnecessary stress to the arm, it hides the ball during the delivery, making life just a little harder for hitters.
“I don’t know where the ball is until it’s out, and then it’s freaking on me,” Black said.
Kranick adopted the same strategies. To help make sure he was not falling back into old habits, Black had Kranick do weighted ball drills before each throw session. Weighted balls have become more popular in recent years, really emerging on the scene because of Trevor Bauer and the Driveline training facility. Such a tool led to some truly unorthodox drills, including having a pitcher throw as hard as they can after taking a running start.
Kranick didn’t do that. In fact, one of the most effective drills was one of the simplest: Just throw the ball and go through his new motions like normal. The tool wasn’t being used just to build up arm strength, like for most pitchers. It was a way to make sure he knew how his body was moving.
“The little bit of extra weight does cause a stimulation within the movement because he’s aware now of where it’s at,” Black said. “You get so used the five ounce [balls], your hand just moves through space and you don’t really know where it’s going.”
Like Black did in PFA, Kranick started to notice a change immediately. Soon, he wasn’t feel pain in his shoulder after throwing.
“It was night and day,” Kranick said. “I couldn’t believe it made that much of a difference.”
The goal was to build up shoulder strength so Kranick could pitch a whole season. They weren’t chasing velocity.
But here’s the thing about adopting more efficient mechanics and building up shoulder strength: Extra velocity usually follows.
Kranick and Black communicated with each other every day during the shutdown, talking about the drills and his throwing. Kranick would also periodically send videos of his progress.
“I would get a video from him once a week and by like, ‘oh, now it’s 96 [mph],’ “ Black recalled.
“Now it’s 97.”
“Now it’s 99.”
“What in the world…”
Courtesy of Max Kranick.
Max Kranick's backyard mound, now in storage for the winter.
DO IT YOURSELF
When Kranick got back home to Scranton, Pa., his instinct was to keep throwing. The problem is he didn’t have anywhere to do it. There aren’t exactly a lot of baseball facilities to choose from in northeast Pennsylvania.
So he and his dad, John, made a mound in his backyard. It helps to have a mechanical engineer in the family.
A week, some plywood and about $300 later, Kranick had his backyard pitching mound.
His brother, Johnny, would make a more expensive investment to help his throw sessions.
Unlike Max, who was drafted out of high school, Johnny pitched in the college ranks as a reliever for Scranton University. Once he hung it up as a player, he joined the Pirates as a minor-league coach, focusing on video and analytics.
Johnny always had an interest with the analytical side of the game, but really dove in while with the West Virginia Black Bears after meeting coach Drew Saylor. Saylor was from the Dodgers, a premier team when it comes to player development, and one that doesn’t shy away from using data to help their minor leaguers.
Saylor turned him on to Rapsodo, a device that tracks spin rates, release points and pitch movement in great detail.
“Once you look at it from that perspective, you don’t want to look at it from any other way,” Johnny was telling me.
Johnny was set to catch his brother’s backyard bullpens, but he wanted to have more to pull from than just the eye test, so he ended up dropping a couple thousand to get his own Rapsodo and a high speed camera. With this data, they would be able to track how the ball left Max’s hand and if he was being consistent with his new mechanics.
“He took those three, four months really seriously,” John said. “It’s free time to explore different avenues. [He knew] those four months could potentially change his life.”
Of course, they didn’t know it was going to be just three or four months at the time. The minor-league season looked in jeopardy. Once there was talk of there potentially being an alternate training site to send prospects, there was no guarantee that Kranick would get an invite.
Towards the end of his bullpen sessions, Max would call out to his brother, “I’m gonna let a couple go here,” warning him that he was going max effort to close his day.
By late June, the Rapsodo reports started to look like this:
Courtesy of Johnny Kranick.
A 98 mph fastball is elite. A fastball with over 2,500 RPM of spin is elite. A 99% spin efficiency is elite.
“If he can consistently do that, we’ve got something great going on,” Johnny said.
To put it in perspective, last season, there were 89,788 four-seam fastballs thrown league wide. Only 693 had at least that much speed and spin (Baseball Savant doesn’t release individual pitch spin efficiencies). That's less than 1%. Batters went 31-for-154 against those fastballs (a .201 average) and struck out 73 times.
In 2019, Kranick was sitting in the lower 90s with a spin rate of about 2,200 RPM. Now his heater is in the mid-90s, though he can ramp it up higher, and has a spin rate in the 2,300-2,400 RPM range. The spin efficiency also went up a couple ticks from the mid- to upper-90s, meaning it is getting even more movement.
“Just being able to throw smooth and easy, without pain,” Max said. “It was really all about the arm path. Being able to get on top, be efficient and repeat the delivery every single time.”
Not too shabby of a bonus for taking care of his shoulder.
'I HAD MORE'
Since 2007, Scranton has been the home of the Yankees’ Class AAA affiliate. Before that, it was part of the Phillies’ farm system.
Naturally, the Kranick boys grew up Mets fans.
Every Sunday the Mets were home during the summer, the Kranick family would make the 2 1/2 hour trek from Scranton to Shea stadium.
Altoona is about as far away from Scranton as Flushing is, albeit in the other direction. In a normal year, they would have made that trip to see him pitch for the Pirates’ Class AA affiliate this season.
They made it anyway, parking at a garage close to Peoples Natural Gas Field and watching from afar.
What they were watching was the new and improved Kranick.
He came in with a polished up fastball, but that wasn’t the only thing Kranick worked on in the backyard. His entire pitch repertoire got a revamp.
For Johnny, the pitch that improved the most was the changeup. At the end of the 2019 season, it was more of a “batting practice fastball” rather than a viable third pitch. Using the Rapsodo, they were able to change the spin axis, or how the pitch rotates towards the plate.
They found a release and axis that changed the spin’s direction by nearly 30 degrees, giving the pitch 17 inches of horizontal movement. Going by Baseball Savant’s data, that would put him in the top 10% of major league pitchers for horizontal movement on changeups.
Courtesy of @piRatesanalysis
He also moved away from his slider, instead opting for a curve that is really more of a slurve and a cutter. He found himself going to that cutter often when he got behind in the count, either to try to steal a strike or get some weak contact.
The curveball was a work in progress. Kranick wants to make it more of a pure curve and was still experimenting will tilts and the axis when he left for Altoona. The new arm path made that process easier.
“It’s just so much easier to be able to be on top,” Kranick said. “Throughout the years when I was throwing my slider, it was just so easy to get on the side of it, but the curveball, I really need to stay over it.”
“I like the spot that it finished at,” he added shortly after.
Due to the lack of starting pitchers in the Altoona camp, Kranick’s outings were shorter than regular starts, with games usually lasting only a couple innings. The point of the camp was to make sure there was baseball activity going on every day since a player could be called up at any time. As a result, his innings were spread out and he could not test the shoulder like he would have in a normal year.
Instead, he got a new batch of opportunities. He faced some of the top prospects in the organization, like Liover Peguero and Nick Gonzales. He battled against hitters who went to the majors this year, like Ke’Bryan Hayes, Jason Martin and Will Craig. Just like his backyard bullpen sessions, the opportunity was different, and it was up to him to make the most out of it.
“People ask me if I had a full year of development this year, and my answer is always, ‘I feel like I had more,’ “ Kranick said.
THE NEXT STEP
Kranick was on the golf course on Nov. 20, the last day to add prospects to the roster. He was trying to keep his mind off of the potentially career altering decision that was being discussed 300 miles away at PNC Park. He didn’t play a lot of golf before this year, but took it up as an escape.
Shortly after finishing his nine holes, around 5:50 p.m., Kranick got the call. He made the roster.
“Just a huge sigh of relief,” he said.
Shortly after, he got a text from Black congratulating him. Kranick thanked him for what he did, but Black reminded him that Kranick was the one who did all the work.
“I’m just Casper the Friendly Ghost,” Black replied. “I’m here to help, but I don’t want to be seen. I’ve had my time. Now you get yours.”
That time may be coming soon. Kranick was supposed to be Altoona in 2020. Cherington has told DK Pittsburgh Sports that players may skip levels next year, based on circumstance. After spending all of 2020 at the satellite camp, Kranick would be a likely candidate to make the jump to AAA next year. If that happens, he could be on call if a spot opens in the rotation.
“We'll likely need some more innings in the minor leagues and hope that happens next year, but we’re encouraged by his progresses this year,” Cherington said.
Kranick is trying not to think that far ahead just yet. He made a big leap in 2020. His focus is on making another one in 2021.
“I’m taking it one day at a time,” Kranick said. “Preparing each day for when that opportunity comes.”
