Have you seen this article?
Anybody catch what inning it was? Picture the evening from a closer's perspective - say David Aardsma getting four days off, and then going 7 innings in extras, hitting 100 all the way and hitting 103 (?) in, say, the 16th.
I think WAS is hyping their guy for the hometown benefit. I'm sure Strasburg can throw 100...but 100 consistently asnd 103 top speed I doubt.
But his 98's looked 105 to me. :- )
Seemed I'd heard that 101, maybe 102 was the limits of human capacity, LOL, so...
...in today's CLE/WAS game, Strasburg is featuring a 98-100 mph fastball...not a 103 mph fastball. :)
What impresses me today, though, is that he's busting out his 92-93 mph "change-up" (which behaves like a Scott Erickson sinker).
So as it turns out...Strasburg actually has two different off-speed pitches...the 92-94 mph 2-seamer (with run and sink like Erickson's sinker) and the 89-91 mph "change-up" with straight-drop action. His fastball is running 97-100 today, but he's throwing more off-speed than straight fastballs today.
Some guns had it 101-03 occasionally, I guess.
Not sure 100-103 is realistic... any pitcher who *sits* 97-100 for a full seven innings is, after all, surpassing Randy Johnson and is fully equallying Nolan Ryan...
Just saw the game score is all -- did see 2 hits, 8 strikeouts, but lots of walks. Wonder if that was more Strasburg or the ump?
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Lincecum's changeup actually became the pitch that gave him staying power as an HOF-class starter, even after he had some velo dropoff. Wonder if Strasburg's change will do the same for him.
The HP ump actually had a fairly wide zone in yesterday's game, Doc. The problem was the pitching mound. A guy like Strasburg is going to get thrown WAY off if his landing pad is not ideal...max effort pitchers tend to be very finicky about such things. And the mound, because of his long stride and the lefty on the mound for the Indians' relatively long stride...had some problems. The top layer of dirt wasn't quite right and it made Strasburg slip several times...once he slipped badly enough to nearly hyperextend his landing leg. He was visibly upset with the mound the entire game after about the third inning.
I do think his other problem was that he was thinking too much. It's great that he likes being a pitcher, not a thrower...that he likes pitching backwards...but he's got a 99 mph heater and he's throwing five consecutive offspeed pitches to banjo hitters like Anderson Hernandez. That's not pitching smart. The little tykes he should be going right after with centered, elevated 100 mph gas and knocking the bats out of their hands.
Got to see a lot of the Strasburg game. He was very effective until he started slipping with his plant foot and that got him very frustrated. Rightly so. Grounds crew came out twice, but he'd already lost the psychological edge and driven up his pitch count, so he came out after a couple of walks in the 6th.
From what I saw, he had the FB around 97-99, the two-seamer that tailed around 93, a change that was around 90 and the curve, which he was throwing for strikes until the mound messed him up, was 83-84.
If he was thinking too much (before he lost the edge) it was because he had a smorgasbord of options and they were all working. How do you pick?
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