Oakland

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Q.  Wow.  19 swings and misses, by the Oakland A's, no less.  Must have followed SSI's prescription?

A.  Nah.  He wasn't using the fastball up.

Reminds us (in pale imitation) of Bill James getting hired by the Boston Red Sox, and the saberdweebs asking him whether he was going to get Nomar to draw some walks and become an intelligent hitter.

"I'm not going to Boston to teach Nomar Garciaparra how to hit," Bill said acidly.

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Q.  What happened, then?

A.  Felix' heater was as vicious as we've ever seen it, but in Michael Pineda style, Randy Johnson style.  Jered Weaver style.  Not in the Clemens-Schilling heritage.  He threw it 95, painted on the black, as opposed to 97 at the letters.  Which also produces an effect that is quite pleasant.

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Q.  95 MPH?  Since when?

A.  F/X gives his average velocity as about 91.5 MPH, these days, but last night he was in excess of 94 MPH.  Average.  He was back up to 96 at times.

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Almonte goes 0-fer with 3 K's  ... but UP with a bullet

We know you're contrarian, Dr. D.  But this is a bit much even for you ... no, really.  SSI is this far from buying in to Abraham Almonte.  Maybe Lloyd McClendon really does see things, here and there, that we don't?

Start with a little table here.  The O-Swing % tells us that Miller has swung at 40% of all pitches not in the strike zone, and I'll bet you can figure the rest out, even if you don't care much a about sabermetrics:

In other words, Miller is fishing for a good amount of sucker pitches.  The Logo is very aggressive.  For some hitters, this is good.  For Vladimir Guerrero, it was good.  For Juan Gonzalez, it was good.  If you had tried to teach Vlad Guerrero to draw walks, we'd have duct-taped you and thrown you a blanket party.

The gap between the 40 and the 65 is not as large as we'd like it.  The bigger the gap, the better.  That gap tells you how well the hitter is anticipating the break of the pitches.

..........

Early in the 2014 season, Miller's aggressiveness is costing him, a little.  His AVG is down to .219 and some of y'all are probably wondering whether Miller really is going to be Bryce Harper At Shortstop.