Dang it now, quit confusing me.
Montero can't catch and that's that. Olivo can and that's that.
Dirt dog grizzled veteran catchers just bring a certain gravitas to a lineup.
You can clearly see it in a teams Win % when the dirt dog guy catches......Wait.....Well, for sure you can clearly see it in cERA,.....Wait.....Most definately you can see it in how the team's ace throws with the dirt dog guy behind the plate, for surely they have a Carlton and McCarver thing going. Dirt dog grizzled veterans just know about aces. Aces just don't throw well to young guys. Wait.......
Ok...How about the fact that dirt dog guys never let a ball past them since they know all about spin and bounces and such grizzled veteran stuff.
No good on that one? You're making this hard.
OK, OK. Well clearly young catchers can't hit while they catch...you know, demands of the position and all.
Not that one either, huh?
Hey, hey...here you go. Obviously you have to play the dirt dog because you certainly don't have two other catchers who are clear offensive improvements over him. Aha!
Really? What's that you say? That one doesn't fly, either?
OK, I've got one. Listen to this! Clearly Sarge-type managers like dirt dog type catchers, because they see themselves in them.
There you go. On the mark.
That's why you should clearly, almost always, put your dirt dog behind the plate. Told you it made sense.
moe
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Q. Was it Jesus Montero, C who fanned the flames of Felix' reignited lust for the strikeout?
A. It's a good thing that I've been educated on this one. ;- ) Because lacking my formal training on Montero's ineffectiveness, I'd have thought that Montero kicked the Padres' keisters all the way back to Sea World.
The curve always seemed to parachute in and land like an M-1 tank out of a C-130, the mortified Padres visibly locking up on it. The fastball, it was frequently up in the zone, where it should be, up and over the Padres' flailing bats. Felix threw more than 50% of his pitches breaking GLOVEside, his cambio notwithstanding.
Montero liked the gloveside-breaking pitches and, naively, kept calling for them. The linear weights spun around like a pinball machine as the cutter, slider, and curve disfellowshipped the Padres from AL baseball.
Montero got 17 (!) swinging strikes on the Padres. Whoops, Felix got 17 swinging strikes.
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Q. Felix went from lousy to good in one night?
A. He was never lousy. He was grinding a little, getting unlucky a lot, and looking worse than he was pitching. His K's be nine, his BB's be three, he be laboring more than he shoulda been.
The Gene Wilder Mainframe is starting to triangulate the causes of this mini-slump. We point the SSI finger accusingly at (1) a flat, melancholy attitude and (2) a long string of predictable pitch sequences. Those two things, plus some balls falling in, have been the culprits. All were as easy to fix as one soul-cleansing RBI double and one rookie catcher who isn't on the same page with the Padre batters.
Nothin' wrong with Felix that a little pitchability couldn't fix. Well, and some velocity separation, some selling of the yakker, some elevation in the zone.
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Q. How much did the NL/AL thing play into it?
A. I've thought for 20 years that the M's were advance-scouted to a fare-thee-well by their AL dance partners. It seems that when they play NL teams, the other dugout no longer has the playbook.
No idea whether the Padres were confused because of this factor. ... Probably not, since they wasted Felix last time.
...........
Sudden thought. Rick Rizzs said that he asked Buster Posey, how many times did Matt Cain shake you off during the perfecto. Buster said proudly, Not. One. Single. Time. Ron Fairly was all over that. "So that's information for you as the hitter! You hit against the catcher, not the pitcher!" Ron followed on to say he knew a lot of guys who scouted the catcher, not the hitter.
Okay then. (1) Olivo catches Felix on June 12, and the Padres take not one single checked swing against Felix. They are RIGHT. ON. EVERYTHING. June 12, Felix throws a spiderweb of sharply moving pitches and the Padres leisurely line them up like bowling pins and splash them all around Los Jardines.
Then (2) Montero catches Felix on June 23, and the exact same lineup does not have a blinkin' clue what's coming. This was not a subtle difference, Geoffy m' man. You got one pitcher, you got one lineup, you got two catchers as the controlled variable, and you had a result of +100 vs. -100. What more do ya need. :daps:
It's a good thing I'm up here in the booth, er, in my mom's basement, and not in the dugout next to Sgt. Wedge and Roger Wil-Co, er, Hansen. 'cause left to my own devices, I'd have drawn a really feebleminded conclusion from these two Felix Padre games.
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Cheers,
Jeff