Right now you've got Dr. D confused about what comes next there, Hector

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Q.  What happened out there?  Noesi fanned 7 and gave up only 3 hits.  To the Rangers.  Not much was hit hard after the first inning.

A.  For one thing, his fastball command was there.

He slowed his tempo a bit on the backstroke, and finished nose-to-leather a little bit better.  There were subtle differences in his motion, which we could side-to-side ... ahhhh, it's kinda late and the differences ain't much.  

Noesi was underlining his little "pause at the top" Nippon-style hitch to slow his backstroke, something of which Moe will approve highly.  You want a slow, smooth takeaway.  Noesi was rushing it a little bit in his April starts, especially as he turned the corner into the throughstroke.  On Tuesday, his tempo was nice and chill.

But mostly it looked like he's starting to find his release point.  He got ahead in the count, and then threw to both sides of the plate, and when he does that he's going to put ANYbody, Babe Ruth or anybody, on the defensive.

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Q.  They talk about his having a great changeup.  Does he?

A.  He actually didn't throw it tonight.  That 1st-inning whiff of Hamilton, and then only four (4) other times all night.  Prior to the last two starts, I graded his pitches:

• FB - very live but no command
• CH - major-league mediocre
• SL - poor
• CV - poor

But against the Rangers, he threw a game-breaking slider, a Michael Pineda slider. 

Here, look at the 0:15, 0:20 and 0:40 points on this video.  Three completely different garbage strikeouts off the slider.  

On the night, he fired 31 sliders (against 5 changes and 3 curves), so they knew it was coming.  But he got 7 swinging strikes and the linear weights was -2.0 runs on 31 pitches.  WOW!

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Q.  Why was the slider effective?

A.  It still has minimal break for an ML slider - it breaks only back to 0.0 inches (exactly!!), whereas ML sliders are supposed to break more like 4-6 inches past the centerline.  The slider actually moves along the identical line on which a cut fastball moves.  LOL.

But meine keine freunde, he had vunderbar arm action on that slider tonight.  Run through the video again.  That's the same reaction that Pedro Martinez got on his curveballs.  Michael Pineda's slider wasn't great because of movement.  Not at all.  It was a scary fastball and then the way he SOLD the slider as a 96 MPH fastball.

I'm hardly his biggest fan, but Noesi's was a TOR performance from the word Go.  Don't talk about one pitch costing him.  You're talking 3 R, 8 IP against the Texas Rangers, and I'll take a million of those.  Even from Felix.

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Q.  Dr's prognosis from here?

A.  I've got to admit that he's showing signs of development.  I didn't expect him to look this chill, even in a couple of games, for a year.  This could be a two-game hiccup.  But if he were to string a handful of games like this, he'd emerge as a coming young impact starter this summer.

No, that wouldn't make him a good reason to waste Taijuan Walker's (non-infinite number of) pitches in the minors...

In this particular game, you could see why the scouts had been pairing Noesi off with Michael Pineda.  Tuesday, his fastball-slider attack did indeed resemble.

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NEXT

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