Three weeks ago, Mark Prior decided it was time to rip the Band-aid off.
After watching Walker Buehler tinker, toil and tumble through 10 troubling starts in his return from a second career Tommy John surgery this season, the Dodgers pitching coach had a simple message for the right-hander ahead of a bullpen session in St. Louis last month.
Buehler had toyed around with his mechanics long enough.
If he was going to salvage his 2024 campaign, it was time to get back to the most fundamental of basics.
“It was a little bit like, ‘Hey man, we need to lock something down,’” Prior recalled this week. “It was very direct: ‘We need to get better at your delivery. You need to be able to get better at throwing strike one and getting ahead.’ So that was the main focus. That’s the only thing we cared about.”