Gammons on Kei: Blame Guidry

Interesting Q&A with Peter Gammons from his segment on the Mike Felger Show on 890 ESPN. Below is part of that transcript and this was particularly interesting on two fronts (emphasis mine):

Don’t know if you’ve heard my spiel, but I wonder if you just have to make a few exceptions for Dice-K and really let throw more pitches than you’re used to allowing and let him go to 120?

PG: They’ve done that and I think it’s a good idea. That’s one thing that the Red Sox have really done. Ron Guidry was the Yankees pitching coach and he took Kei Igawa and changed his delivery and he’s never been the same. The interesting thing was that if the Yankees put Igawa on waivers the Sox, from my understanding, were going to put a claim in on him. He needs to go back to doing what he does when he was a very successful pitcher in Japan.

Let's review, shall we?

1. Guidry screwed up Kei
2. RedSox were ready to claim him if waived

What can we make of this? Just as a pitching coach is often credited with saving or returning a pitcher to a certain level, can we hang Guidry for messing up Kei? Can't Kei simply go back to doing what worked for him in Japan, now that Guidry is gone? I need to go hunting for the pitch mechanics who can look at the before/after deliveries of Kei and weigh in. (If you have seen something like this, please send it to me!)

As for the Sox claiming Kei, well, I just don't know. I can see them trying to "fix" him, hoping he'd be more comfortable with Dice, Okajima, etc. Maybe they were hoping to deal him for other spare parts. Maybe they were just eager to stick it to the Yanks.

Who knows? I just found it all pretty interesting.