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To my eye, Marco Gonzales has been a classic "Changeup Lefty" who has been doing battle without his good changeup.  That is a hopeful take on life for him, because if he ever gets back his St. Louis changeup he's got miles of upside.  From where he's at now.

Again Tuesday, he threw a Duncan Yo-Yo box full of "changeups," 23 of them against only 25 fastballs and 13 fastballs.  That's the right idea for him in the 10-year scan, a Japanese pitch mix.  But the changeup still has little velocity separation from his fastball - about 7 MPH, the equivalent of only about 4 feet worth of parachute.  The batter can just drag his bat a little and cover that.  

Even worse, he consistently leaves it high.  As much as we've been admiring Andrew Albers' gorgeous strike zone plots, this one is Yoo-Glee:

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The blue ones are changeups and that's at least 7 of them that are engraved invitations to Back Leg Specials.  Seven engraved invitations out of 23 total attempts.  Like we sez, there are times a pitcher's line (5 IP, 3 ER, 1 BB, 6 K) is less than he deserves and times it is better than he deserves.  (With James Paxton, it's always less than he deserves unless it's a shutout!...)

All that said, Marco's mound presence is wunnerful.  His stinging little fastball can buzz either edge with annoyance, as in this single-pitch video.  And his slow yakker remains two clear plateaus better than we expected to see.  Considering that he's climbing back off surgery, Dr. D is forced to agree with Greg Johns that "the best is almost certainly yet to come" and forced to agree with Bat/Zoom that Gonzales has a shot at #2-3 starter upside.

Hey, if he threw THAT St. Louis changeup against THIS fastball and THIS curve you could absolutely see him making a very nice name for himself.  That's not a given, of course, but is it worth a draw at the deck?  ...

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EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

It sounds (bodaciously) funny to say, but.  Moe and Jonezie said it.  Jerry Dipoto has dug so frantically for Scrub rotation gold that you can now start hallucinating too many starters in Arizona 2018.  

... Erasmo Ramirez has got to be somewhat alarming to AL West rivals at the moment.

... Ariel Miranda has gotten into a somewhat frustrating sine wave down at the moment; the gopheritis comes from stubbornness and you'd have liked to have seen a better delta on his feel for the game.

... Andrew Moore went to the high fastball with alacrity last time out and got plenty of swingthroughs.  In fact the M's website didn't hesitate to peg him as "dazzling" when announcing his instant promotion.  From that video, here are the pitches:

√ Letter-high fastball and ... moved out to the black for good measure

√ Neatly above the lefty Odour's hands

√ Caught a stRanger in passive, "in between" mode

√ Juuuuuuust above the hands, and you can see the effect of his 1x11 cut-type rising action

√ Lefty Ranger almost feeling for the ball and having no luck

√ Paintball, again fairly high

√ Challenge pitch

That's a whale of a lot of swingthroughs on a 92 MPH fastball.  Remember now that he's working with Iwakuma's pitch arsenal, roughly, and if Iwakuma were firing a 9-yard belt of high fastballs by people there's no telling what he'd do with his other weapons.

The Mainframe does not think that Andrew Moore has "arrived" but it certainly is happy about the fact that he is not a stagnant young man.

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Not sure what all this means but the Mainframe has grokked an opinion for you.  Yovanni Gallardo's slot, prol'ly not, Nuh Uh.  Tomorrow's News Today, Babe.    ... ;- )

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WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY

Mike Leake, the live telecasts of which have completely reassured the Denizens.  Leake is an average-solid ML starting pitcher, as opposed to an average-mediocre one.  There is a certain annoyance to the Batista-Silva-Washburn mindset, we see you and raise.  We've got 20% of our rotation now occupied for years by a 102-type pitcher, for a decent chunk of money.  We'll forgive if another 20% is James Paxton and a third 20% is Shohei "101 MPH" Otani.

Felix for a few innings, followed by Andrew Albers.

Paxton for a few innings, followed by ? does anybody know?

For some reason a Tweep asked Ryan Divish the M's odds of getting Otani and he replied, "50-50."  We assume he was trolling or whatever, but there y'go.

BABVA,

Dr D