SLOPS TO DOUG FISTER'S LUCK TONIGHT.  

Play this game ten times, with the same pitches and swings, and the M's win about 6 or 7 of them.  Tonight was one of the 3 or 4.

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Wedge was asked in the postgame, what was wrong with Fister ... (you know how it is.  If the other team won, you messed up, didn't you?)

Wedge came right back at them:  No. Fister threw the ball very well.  He ran into some bad luck.  There was the ball off Peguero's glove, there was a game-deciding balk call from the 1B ump that should have been the 3B ump's call, there was a squeeze play, and other things.

"Fister competes as well as anybody we've got," Wedge finished, pointedly including Felix in his love for Fister's game. 

I agreed.  

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PROPS TO REAL DOOGIE -

The 6 strikeouts and 0 walks told the real tale.  Was pleased to see Strikeout Doogie back, after Gimenez' fastball 2-K game last time around.  

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SLOPS TO FISTER'S MISTAKES -

One thing Doogie did do wrong:  he threw some sliders to LHB's that were in their hot zones (mostly because he just missed his spot).  Three or four legit hits, off of Fister pitches that were easy to hit.  

It's baseball, not pub darts.  You can't throw to a quarter-inch tolerance.  Tuesday, Fister didn't happen to get away with his misses.

Bottom line:  Doogie's slider is a neat pitch, but it's still his 4th pitch.  Or that's what it says here (and Brooks says that it had a mediocre runs outcome).  

Hope he doesn't get infatuated with the slider, because as fun as it may be to throw, I bet he's going to find that --- > his run values aren't real strong with it.

PROPS AND SLOPS both TO DOOGIE'S SLIDER -

Olivo went mostly fastballs one time through to establish the fastball, then a random mix -- and Fister mowed them down.

Fister threw 21 of his 23 sliders for strikes.

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Fister throws more of a slider, as opposed to a cutter.

He does not (loosely speaking) use his slider/cutter the way  Mike Marshall, Jamey Wright and Jason Vargas do.  

They throw FB's and cutters to the same spots ... at about 3 mph difference ... with about the same drop ... the pitch breaks in or out ... and this causes confusion just as the hitter swings.

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Fister's slider is about -5 or -6 mph off his fastball, has a bigger velo delta off his FB.  It breaks down more -- and he (more frequently) throws it to slider spots.

Tuesday tried to backdoor it to lefties as though it were a real curve ball, and often got it hit that way.  But when Fister throws a hard 87 slider, swerving in onto a LHB's hands, it's a strikeout pitch.  IIRC he got Kubel or Morneau on a slider that broke WAY inside.

Fister uses his slider like David Cone, deploying it like a breaking ball.  The Mike Marshall guys throw their cutters like fastballs.

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So far, Dr. D dislikes Fister's backdoor "nickel curve" to LHB's - it doesn't really break hard enough, and breaks into their bats.

And he's got to be careful to get the slider far enough in.  The big Kubel RBI was a slider, hand-high, that caught a lot of the plate.  Kubel easily rifled it into RF.

But Dr. D LOVES LOVES LOVES Fister's slider as a jam pitch to LHB's.  Oh yeah.  Gimme that located 91 fastball, the 86 jam slider, and the drop curve vs lefties.  Sweet like ice cream. 

Stow the backdoor nickel curve to LHB's.  Grrrrrrrrrrr >:-[

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To RHB's, Dr. D likes the slider anywhere.  It really does slide off the end of their swings.  As a surprise pitch.

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SLOPS TO FISTER'S MIA CHANGEUP.  

He threw it only a couple of times.  It's hard to keep your feel for 4 different pitches.   One reason we didn't want Pineda dinking around with a changeup.

Who knows:  maybe one of these days, Fister will consistently finesse all four of his pitches in the same games, and become what John Lackey was a few years ago.

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PROPS TO FISTER'S 75mph CHANGE CURVE.  

It was breaking even harder today, and has developed a 2-plane tilt to it (Brooks had it with 6" of gloveside break).  Devastating to both sides of the plate.  

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PROPS TO FISTER'S VELOCITY.  

Early on he was 90-93 ... with the Chris Young effect, that's a good 95 (or more) from a shorter pitcher.  Man, Fister was good at 87-88.  Now he's got a long fastball?

Eric Wedge speaks of Doug Fister like he was an emerging TOR starter.  Fister's game is in flux, constantly morphing and adapting.  It's hard to triangulate who he is right now, much less to say where he'll come out.

He is a talented young starter.  His early label was that of AAAA starter, and he'll be three years shaking it off.  But imagine if he were a Yankee?

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