RADAR LOVE

Who needs magnetic imaging when the unrelenting and omnipresent speed guns have served to track the health of Jason Schmidt’s shoulder?

Now back on the 15-day disabled list, the $47-million Dodgers right-hander has been under the gun so often in the first year of his three-year contract, so frequently asked about the correlation between speed and sound (as in the stability of his shoulder), that he now politely refuses to discuss it.

If only he could escape it.

From Walter “Big Train” Johnson to “Rapid” Robert Feller to Nolan Ryan and his Express to Joel Zumaya and the spiraling flames tattooed on each arm, baseball’s fascination with pitching velocity has led to a universal signpost: Speed Checked by Radar.

“It’s simply part of the industry culture now,” Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said of the technical evolution to hand-held and stationary radar guns that have become far more than a scouting tool or even a vehicle by which baseball caters to the interest of fans and media.

With the speed of pitches illuminated on almost all scoreboards, with Fox and ESPN trying to out-gun each other, with seam-head Internet sites offering esoteric statistics and speed readings, with even overzealous Little League parents timing pitches as orthopedists wait in anticipation, the culture is rampant to a fault, perhaps.

After all, speed can still kill (“Major league hitters can turn around a bullet,” veteran scout Dean Jongewaard said), and pitching is still pitching, as exemplified by the ongoing success of control and off-speed specialists Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Jamie Moyer, all in their 40s.

In addition, seeing is not always believing.

“I don’t know this as a fact,” Dodgers General Manager Ned Colletti said, “but I think in some cases the board has been doctored. I mean, the gun may be right, but the board isn’t.”

In other words, Colletti said, a team may inflate the velocity of its pitchers to get opposing hitters over-swinging or deflate the velocity of opposing pitcher to get them over-throwing.

There is widespread belief among scouts, for instance, that the San Diego Padres have been adding two to three mph to the posted listing of Trevor Hoffman’s fastball at Petco Park to plant a seed with hitters that their 39-year-old closer retains a significant differential between his fastball and famed changeup.

Gamesmanship?

Schmidt suspected his readings were tampered with when he visited Chavez Ravine as a member of the San Francisco Giants, saying earlier this season: “We always thought they were messing with it right here at Dodger Stadium. I’d look up and say to myself, ‘Not 83.’ ”

Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper laughed. He recalled a 1977 game in which he played second base for Cleveland at Texas, with hard-throwing Dennis Eckersley starting for the Indians against the much softer-throwing Doyle Alexander.

Gun readings were only starting to be posted on scoreboards, and as the Indians took a 3-0 lead into the middle innings, the numbers for Alexander on the board were suddenly faster than those of Eckersley, who was slowly getting agitated.

“He was so full of himself in those years,” Kuiper said. “I went to the mound and he said, ‘Can you believe this? That [guy] is throwing harder than I am?’

“We all knew what was going on, but he couldn’t help himself, the perfect guy to get under his skin. He was young and all about blowing people away. He started to try and throw every pitch 100 miles per hour and ... got shelled.”

Baseball has long been a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, and the newer wiring has merely led to new speculations.

The guns

The radar guns used by major league teams today are the same as those used by law enforcement. Two guns dominate both markets: the Jugs, made by Jugs in Tualatin, Ore., and the Stalker, made by Applied Concepts Inc. in Plano, Texas. Both are based on Doppler shifts and electromagnetic waves. They are calibrated by tuning fork and almost impossible, according to executives of both companies, to recalibrate after leaving the factory.

If one gun is faster than the other at times, if readings differ from stadium to stadium, it may have more to do with the angle and location at which the guns are used than any real conspiracy, the executives said.

As an example, longtime Boston scout Jerry Stephenson doesn’t carry his personal gun to Anaheim because “the Angels generally give scouts such lousy seats the gun would be useless.” He does use his gun at Dodger Stadium, where scouts still sit behind the plate and the speed numbers on the board “are so small you need Ted Williams’ eyes to see them.”

The wry Stephenson is about as skeptical as it gets when it comes to the sweep of radar technology.

“All I know is that I watched a Red Sox-Yankee game on TV the other day and they had guys throwing five miles an hour faster than they’ve ever thrown in their life,” Stephenson said.

“I mean, people have told me that last year in San Francisco the gun had Schmidt at 98 at times and Noah Lowry at 92. Are you kidding? Schmidt hasn’t seen 98 in years, and Lowry probably couldn’t throw more than 88 if he threw from 50 feet, let alone 60.”

The pitchers

With every pitch recorded by one gun or another, with every pitch and seemingly every haircut recorded by one statistical outlet or another, there is a movable feast of radar readings, including what Baseball Almanac lists as the fastest of the fastest: A 103-mph pitch by former Atlanta closer Mark Wohlers in a 1995 spring training game and matched by Zumaya, the tattooed Detroit reliever, in a 2006 game at Oakland.

Zumaya is said to have led the major leagues with an average fastball of 98.56 mph last year (New York Mets closer Billy Wagner was second at 96.47) and that Zumaya threw 233 fastballs of 100 mph or more, with New York Yankees reliever Kyle Farnsworth a distant second with 26.

In Anaheim recently, Zumaya -- who is on the disabled list recovering from finger surgery -- said he feeds off the high-octane expectations but is trying to become a more rounded pitcher.

“Everybody knows I throw hard,” he said. “You can hear the buzz when I come in. You know they’re waiting for that first pitch and the reading on the radar, and all of that works to my advantage.

“But I’ve been trying to plant another seed as well, drop some 85-mile-per-hour hammers, some changeups as well. There’s more than one way to create a buzz, and I won’t always be able to throw 100.”

The gun, however, is tantalizing. Some in the Dodgers’ organization believe that former closer Eric Gagne kept monitoring it so closely in his series of comebacks from physical problems, kept pressing to see those high 90s readings, that he kept setting himself back, aggravating injuries.

Bartolo Colon of the Angels took so much heat for pitching to the gun during his early years with Cleveland that he now requests that the board readings be turned off in Anaheim.

“I check out the readings,” Dodgers pitcher Randy Wolf said, “but it’s more to see where my off-speed pitches are. I want my curve slowed to about 70 and my changeup about 75. The hitters’ swings will tell you where your velocity is, and every park is different anyway.”

The highs and lows of the gun certainly registered with former Florida and San Francisco closer Robb Nen.

From his 102 clocking as the Marlins closer in the 1997 World Series he would ultimately battle through a series of arm issues that ended his big-league career prematurely after the 2002 season. By the time he pitched for the Giants in the playoffs and World Series that year, his club would turn off the radar readings on the home scoreboard.

“I didn’t ask them to do it, but maybe they thought I could trick another batter or two, get through another inning or two,” Nen said. “Reputation goes a long way.”

Now there are youngsters trying to build their own reputation, throwing too hard too early on Little League mounds or in small cages set up in the concourses of major and minor league parks where they can measure speed.

“I’m involved, and I see parents back there at Little League games with radar guns,” former Angels closer Troy Percival said, “and they come and tell me how hard their kid is throwing and I tell them, ‘That’s not the important thing we’ve got going here. We’re trying to teach them about good mechanics, throwing strikes, how to win, but you’ve got your kid more worried about throwing 50.’

“Look, my son is probably the No. 1 advocate. He’s 8 and he says, ‘But dad, I hit 50,’ and I tell him, ‘I don’t care. You didn’t get anyone out.’ It’s amazing. They’re caught up in velocity just like they’re caught up in how far their home runs went.”

Yet, Percival said, he enjoyed checking out his speed readings because he considered it part of the entertainment package.

“If the fans like it, that’s why we were out there anyways,” he said. “I knew how hard I was throwing. It didn’t affect my performance to look. It was hard to avoid looking.”

The hitters

They are two Dodgers veterans with differing thoughts on the speed readings.

Nomar Garciaparra has no inclination to look, wishes it wasn’t up there.

Jeff Kent checks it out, some current information on top of the scouting reports.

Said Garciaparra: “If the fans like it, fine, but I don’t like that they show it. I don’t want to be up there with any preconceived notions about how hard a guy throws or doesn’t throw. I don’t want to go up there looking at a reading in the 80s and suddenly have a pitch just explode on me. Who knows how accurate that stuff is anyway?”

Said Kent: “The later I get in my career the more I try to coordinate pitch speed with sort of a predetermined swing rhythm. If I see that a pitcher’s velocity is consistently in a certain area, I can try to dial in that rhythm.

“You’ve heard the expression ‘be stupid’ at the plate, but you still have to be prepared. You’ve got to be ready if a guy is throwing 95, so that goes to a predetermined mind-set and swing rhythm. Some of it is in the scouting report, but for me at this stage it’s also helpful to be able to look up and see how hard he’s throwing that day.”

The internal overview

All organizations arm their amateur and pro scouting staffs with radar guns and require next-day reports on pitchers at all levels, including gun readings.

Whether appraising the arm strength and potential ceiling of high school and college players, the health and heat of an organization’s minor league players, or the most recent performances of a major league free agent or possible trade acquisition, speed guns are just “one more tool in the equation,” said the Dodgers’ Colletti.

“I would be remiss if I looked at a scouting report and didn’t check out the gun readings,” he said. “However, seeing for yourself and getting to know a guy are the best indicators.

“For me, it comes down to this: Are speed guns part of the culture? Yes. Are they the end-all? No.”

The Angels’ Scioscia agreed.

“I think the awareness of velocity and how hard the pitcher is throwing not only piques the interest of fans,” he said, “but all of us in the dugout as well. I’ve often seen the ball come out of a pitcher’s hand hot and said ‘Wow, let’s check that out on the board.’

“Internally, though, when we’re talking about player development and winning games and creating game plans, velocity really takes a back seat to command, location and pitch selection. Those fundamental aspects of baseball have to be alive and well at every step.

“We check velocity throughout our system using the same type of gun so that we’re comparing apples to apples, but there’s also no correlation between lack of velocity and lack of achievement. You don’t have to light up a gun to be effective.”

Does Jason Schmidt believe that?