=== Mark Lowe ===
Came in, bottom of the 8th, the M's just having taken a 3-2 lead. First fastball clocked a big red 98 mph. And it looked it. The amount of time the ball was in the air, on TV, looked like a Nolan Ryan-, Randy Johnson-class FB to us...
We had a good friend once tell us his theory that there is a point at which even ML hitters can't really "hit" a fastball the way they usually do. He meant, sure, they can make contact sometimes on a 100 fastball, but they do it by using tricks, "timing" the bat etc, and if you could gather the stats on 100 fastballs, you'd see woeful AVG/OBP/SLG lines. The 100 mph pitch was beyond human reflexes, he thought.
Obviously he's right at some point. Nobody would be able to touch a 109 fastball. What point is this? My friend thought that this defeats-human-reflexes point was right at 98 mph, other things being equal.
Having noodled around watching this theory over the past ten years or so, it's usually seemed that he is right, other things being equal. It's awfully seldom you see a hitter read and react to a 98-101 pitch the way that Paul Konerko reacted to David Aardsma's 96 mph fastball on Saturday ...
.............
Lowe threw the second fastball 98, also, and the way that the ball was exploding out of Lowe's hand, Moore just said, what the hey. Lowe's ten pitches in the 8th inning:
Do you recall the last time you saw a pitcher throw every pitch, in an inning, at 98 mph or faster?
The Mark Lowe who got yanked up out of AA in the summer 2006 was, for about a month, one of the best pitchers I've ever seen. Then he suffered that bizarre injury, one with a long recovery time, and I've always wondered if he'd ever get back to the 2006 Lowe.
He still isn't combining the three nuclear pitches that he showed back then, but sometimes it seems like he is gaining on it.
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Lowe's fastball run value this season was +3.4, before he threw ten more "perfect" run-value fastballs on Tuesday. His slider and change are, in essence, the only pitches that have gotten hit this season.
With Lowe, League, Kelley, and Aardsma, in the long run the M's will maintain an advantage in close games this season. And they'll need it, because they're playing 1960's ballgames.
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Cheers,
jemanji
I watched those ten pitches and got worried...twice...when the batter appeared to square up said pitches...the last pitch to Kendall he clobbered...right to Bradley five steps in front of the warning track (luckily, Kendall has absolutely ZERO power)...the last pitch to Gordron...he was a tad late but squared the ball up and flew out to right, I believe. Both times, I said "ah crap...home run"...before the ball sailed harmlessly into someone's mitt.