=== FRAZZLER Ian Snell ===

What's in no-man's land between Sizzler & Fizzler?  F' Shizzle?  Frappe?  Zsaszle?

Ian threw a knockout slider tonight, as evidenced by the 5 strikeouts against only one walk (5:1 meaning that you are getting strikes without making them fish).  The slider not only had hair on it, but it was thrown with really gorgeous arm action, almost like a change, and had the Rangers out in front.

The fastball was hit. a. bowl. baby doll.  Snell's FB is usually -2mph, due to his actual release point being far from home plate and other things, but today it was also clocking < 90 (maybe on a slow gun).

In between the 5 K's, the stRangers had two jacks, a double, and three singles, six hits and three runs.  That's tough to do when five K's in four innings leave you only seven other outs.

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It suddenly dawns, maybe why the M's want Snell to pound the knees (reducing the strike zone to a 4x18 inch area).  Maybe they're resigned to hard contact, and figure, let's maximize the LD's and GB's but powerflush the HR's?

SSI would not sign off on this idea, if that were the case.  Neither would the stRangers.

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IMHO Snell's best path right now is to reinvent himself as Aaron Sele:  live off the slider, nibble with the fastball, trick your way to a 100 ERA+.

Could be wrong.

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=== SIZZLER Kanekoa Texeira ===

Two thumbs way up.  Take the whole family.  Twice.

Had the RH quasi-Sherrill delivery as expected.  Niiiiiice. 

Watching him, we can see why people would interpret him as a sidearmer -- although the arm slot is high, the pitch action is actually that of a sidearm pitcher.  86, 87 mph a lot of the time, with really unusual dive to the pitch.

The Rangers had 31 flavors of trouble picking up the ball out of Texeira's hand.  Time after time, they swung late, defensively, and weirdly through his 87 fastballs.  Tex fanned 3 of 4 hitters, with one groundout and never touched 90.  Gay-lerd Perry would have loved this kid.

Texeira essentially throws the same-shaped pitch every time, a hockey-stick pitch, and his default was 86-87.  But he could take a little off, to 84, or hump up to 89.  Once he threw it at 78.  The effect was to get more dive as the pitch was slower -- so the 78-82 version acts like a spitball and he gets swings and misses with it.

It's really pretty weird to see so many swings and misses on a Shigetoshi Hasegawa humpback 85 slider.  But Texeira's deception is plus-plus.

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You know how, in the batting cage, you can kind of time the pitch and even shlubs like us can hit 90?  Texeira is the anti-cage pitching machine.  The ball comes in a different velocity every time.

Then how are they supposed to cheat?  They've got to actually wait and read the velocity, pitch after pitch.  That adds velo.  Also the short-arm adds velo.  Then you've got the hellacious little dive on the pitch.

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The beauty of the whole thing is that Texiera is a novel pitcher who will benefit from novelty.  You can hide him in the #5 bullpen slot, bring him in one inning, and ....

The book will be no help to AL hitters whose eyes just aren't used to that kind of ball.  At MINimum he'll have shock value through the All-Star break.  More likely a year-and-a-half, if used sparingly.

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This is my idea of a Rule 5 pick.  Not a talented, raw little shortstop you like, and have to stash on a 4-man bench.  Rather, a bullpen arm that you like to help you immediately.

Is there no end to Zduriencik's bag of tricks?  Now we're getting third-order Rule 5 strategizing....

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Way upside for Texeria this year:  a Pat Neshek supergeek season.  Note also Neshek's novelty-colored ERA+ trend.

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