.
Felix had good stuff, even by his own standards, on Tuesday night. His fastball averaged 92.9 MPH and would have been even higher if the last seven -- 15% of them -- had not dropped off in velocity. Felix' speed is, more or less, back.
Here is a movement chart for Tuesday night. The blue spots are from the perfect game; the red spots are from the start before that. As you can see, his breaking pitches were pretty much where they were for the perfect game. The fastball did not cut in as much on lefties as it has been doing -- it was about 50-50 half way between a regular 8" armside two-seamer and a crackling 0" cutter -- but still had the movement we love to see. The Cleveland game is represented by the black spots:
.........................................
Felix had a #1 starter result Tuesday night, eight* innings, one run. But you and I know that he wasn't as dominant as usual. The reason was pitchability and, as Matt said, command that was less than his best. The Indians guessed a lot of his pitches spot on.
Here, check out a Brooks Baseball location chart that normalizes for LH and RH. To the right of this chart is OUTSIDE, whether it be the right side of the plate vs. RH or the left side of the plate vs LH. So this chart is from the catcher's point of view, and it imagines all lefty hitters as though they were right-handed.
null,"attributes":{"height":112,"width":160,"class":"media-element file-default"}}]] winners don't finish the year with 0.00 ERA's. Hopefully next time around, Felix won't wallow in the black quite so comfortably.
By the way, Felix hits 8 batters per year. Roger Clemens also hit 8 batters per year.
.
Q. How did Luetge do?
A. Eighteen pitches, of which 14 were breaking pitches. 12 of those 14 breaking pitches were strikes.
As you might have noticed by now, Luetge has a meh fastball, a meh curve and a slider that is sweet like ice cream. Wedge brought him in against the last four lefties and told Luetge to make them prove they could make contact with his slider. They couldn't.
The kid is a bona fide #5 reliever in the bullpen. Get Capps rolling in the 3 slot and, gentlemen, next year's playoff* bullpen is actually on the roster as we speak.
.
Part of the reason Felix was living on the outside corner so much was that the HP ump was giving ZERO ground on inside pitches and pitches down in the zone. He missed a good 10-12 strikes low and inside from Felix early in the game and was giving him 4 inches off the plate away.
You got it Doc,
Felix was trying to keep the ball in the ballpark while pitching to Choo and Santana. Two AB's of quasi off-speed away and then the up-and-in cutter just didn't fool Santana. He got his off-speed away, the one he looked for, and whacked a hit. Santana can hit a bit, IIRC.
From Felix's perspective, the two guys who could tied it up with one cut, hadn't. There's a sort of a victory there. Even with a guy on first, you have a combined 19 homers coming up in the next three guys. And he still pounded two of those three meat guys away. (Well, Brantley isn't meat...but he isn't a homer threat either).
Would a couple of notes of chin music helped in this inning? Probably. But mostly Felix chucked with a bit of caution to the two guys who could hurt him. As even The King should have.
And thanks for not lamenting that Felix struggled last night. He didn't, really. He went 7.2 innings, only threw 105 pitches, allowing 8 baserunners, and then the two errors. He was, after all, pitching against a group of MLB'ers, not the Everett squad. A WHIP of one-point-next-to-nothing ain't bad.
The difference between last night's game and the El Grande Perfecto was immense. The difference between this game and a 5-hit gem was fractional, if existent at all. Plug this game into the (now) 8-game streak I wrote about the other day and it fits perfectly.
And as much as I like Brosnan and Russo, McQueen and Dunaway were WAY better.
Wow man, you drive like Steve McQueen (still one of the 2 or 3 best Cheech and Chong lines ever),
moe
Felix has 4 1-0 complete game victories. I really wish the M's could of held onto a couple of those leads in Chicago.
