=== Pennant-Race Crossroads Dept. ===
Daniel-san / David / Jamey step up on stage for the fate of their and Capt Jack's eternities
Steinbrenner Minion: Well, well, well. Who sent YOU heah!
Daniel-san: ...
Daniel-san: Terrified. Lower lip quivers. But will not break eye contact.
Steinbrenner Minion: Can' talk little man? Bet can't play none, either!
Daniel-san: ...
Daniel-san: Snaps amp jack into his all-go, no-show Stratocaster. Positions left hand on fretboard.
Steinbrenner Minion: ....
Steinbrenner Minion: Uh-HUH.
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Unfortunately for you, rather than Steve Vai vs. Ry Cooder, you get Dr. D vs. jemanji. But the right guy still wins.
The M's bullpen ERA+, going into Saturday's game:
Nobody in the Seattle blog-o-sphere, much less at ESPN New York, had bought into these glitzy numbers. But after this bullpen starred in white-knuckle 4-3 and 5-4 wins over the Yankees ... now what?
The bullpen, in both games, outpitched Michael Pineda and Felix Hernandez. Let me read that sentence again. And against this lineup:
Both victories were due to David Pauley & Co.
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=== David Pauley ===
And his 418 ERA+ are moving targets. ... Riddle me this, Batman: when is the last time you saw an M's manager ask a reliever to pitch 2 innings... on back-to-back nights? And Pauley was nails on the second night!
........
... Having gone to the bullpen, his pitches all had that few inches' extra bite this season. POTD David Pauley
But the last three games, Pauley has gotten even better. This is perfectly acceptable with Dr. D.
And he has zeroed in on two dominating pitches: his plus-plus changeup and his super-sinker. Right now his pitches, on a scout's scale:
That's a real good 4-pitch mix, but an even better 2-pitch mix, and he's gone to the 2-pitch mix.
........
A major league sinking fastball is an 8x5 pitch, as I think of it: it fades armside 8 inches and rises 5 inches. The 4-seamer is 5x9 ... five inches' fade and 9 inches' hop.
Pauley's is a couple inches better than that, usually -- his FB is a 10x3 pitch.
That's great, but the last few games it has been a 10x1 pitch. That is sink almost equal to Felix Hernandez' slider, which is also 89 mph and -8 to -10 inches of sink (vs. a 4-seam fastball). Pauley's normal fastball is getting dangerously close to being the same thing as Felix' slider. (?!)
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That -8 inches of sink (compared to an average fastball) is now running with the Big Dogs of sinkerville. Pauley could now make a career of that sinker, alone, if he wanted to specialize. (Saturday, he did: he threw it 18 of 26 pitches and the $113M lineup couldn't touch it.)
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Pauley's changeup has also been special as we move into midseason...
An ML change is a 7x4 pitch: it fades armside seven inches, and it rises four inches vs. vacuum (so, it sinks -5 compared to a four-seam fastball).
Pauley's change is a 9x1 pitch: it fades, and dips, much more than average. But lately it is a 9x(-3) pitch.
Pauley's changeup, Saturday, dove 7 inches more than an average ML changeup. It's my understanding that an average ML changeup is a pitch that you and I couldn't hit.
David Pauley is simply getting dazzling sink on his FB and change (and his 3rd and 4th as well). If you looked over this man's F/X without knowing who he was, you would think he was a star reliever. That, or he had Miguel Olivo cutting the ball on a sharpened knee-guard buckle. As Jim Bouton once said, the Buckle Ball sings four bars from Aria...
Pauley might as well be throwing a scuffball. Like, scuffed with a steak knife.
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He's a secret because he throws 88 mph. But don't confuse rep with ability. Others will wait for him to stop getting lucky. You, the SSI reader, will sit back and wallow in the knowledge that David Pauley is your secret weapon.
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=== Jamey Wright ===
Made his Mike Marshall game work to perfection:
The average ML curve, by the way, has a 6x6 break: it breaks gloveside 6 inches, and drops (relative to vacuum) 6 inches. (You would call this 6x15 if comparing it to a fastball.)
Wright's curve, Saturday night, broke 11x9 inches. Huge drop -- and at the same time it cracked in to LHB's like a Wham-O frisbee. (You would call it 11x18 vs. a fastball).
A normal curve breaks 8.5 total vector from center point ... Wright's was breaking 14 inches. How long is a baseball bat, past the pine tar?
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=== Aaron Laffey ===
Making a long story short, he throws mediocre but reliable LHP pitches, and you can count on strikes. He gets some sink on the ball, and doesn't get taken yard much. Let 'em put the ball in play, don't beat yourself, that's the idea with Laffey. Use BABIP and Pascal's Triangle with this pitching change.
An inning arose in which the Yankees had 3 lefties in 4 hitters scheduled ... Cano (catcher) Swisher Gardner. Wedge brought him in. As a LOOGY, he served his purpose.
Nice.
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=== Brandon League ===
Defiantly throws what he wants. Nothing that SSI has written has changed: Tipping pitches is not okay. The day will come, probably soon, in which he begins another run of being splashed against the fences.
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But we have cheerfully conceded that --- > in those games wherein League throws hair-fine fastballs on strike one, that he'll be fine.
Saturday, he managed that. And he did it against Tex, ARod, Cano, etc. Good on him.
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=== Can Pauley Start On Sunday? ===
Be interesting to see if they call somebody up on Sunday to go 3-4 innings behind Vargas. But we have digressed.
Salvation has fallen upon us from unlikely sources. David Pauley and Jamey Wright are air-guitaring Ry Cooder / Trevor Hoffman for us. They can step onstage with anybody.
Be Afraid,
Dr D
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Pauley is turning into star reliever. Doc, you nabbed him in our SSI league before I could. :-)
I'm not as sold on the rest of the bullpen. I think theres some regression about to happen there.
Still, the Ms are a game above .500 and are no longer running multiple 60 OPS+ players in starting spots (either than LF and Figgins). The SP looks killer (although Felix could use an extra day off).
Not that I don't think he'll hit some...he'll probably still hit .300+...but he looks SLOW out there now. The fly in the 7th that hit the middle of the wall in RF...that's a ball he glides under and easily...EASILY catches two years ago. He's lost three steps and is now barely above average for speed for a big league outfielder. You also saw the problem this causes on that 87 hopper to Jeter that he should have beat for a hit if he were still fast.
It's a good thing this contract is about to end...I hope he doesn't get paid as much if he gets an extension.
His sinker and his changeup are his best pitches, but he's not married to them. He said something to the effect of, "I just figure out what's working in the bullpen out of my four pitches and go with that for the night."
So when the sinker's on, he kills you with it. If he can whiplash you with the change, he does.
But on nights when those are NOT working for him in warmups he just switches out to the curve or slider and looks like a different pitcher (as he was doing a bit earlier in the year).
VERY few pitchers are brave enough to go with their 4th best pitch as a feature pitch simply because it "feels better" that night. I liked Pauley last year and in Spring Training, but I didn't think he would keep calling the right feature-pitch in rock-paper-scissors every night.
That's some kinda skill if he really CAN tell in 20 pitches which pitch is plus for the evening before ever stepping on the mound.
~G
As a side note and just a general observation without much evidence to back it up. I've noticed that when Felix throws his sinking pitch it hasn't been as sharp as it has been in the past. It seems to break a little later rather than dying or falling off the table just before reaching the plate. In late 2009 and early 2010 it was just killer. Not so much recently.
Ichiro is concerning, Figgins all the more. We need to find a way to get Ichiro more pitches and I think that means a more solid number two hitter.
www.sodojoe.blogspot.com
He would be my personal choice to hit second...at least against the righties. Against lefties, perhaps Luis Rodriguez or Franklin Gutierrez.
Or we could call up Ackley and solve or TOTO problems instantly.
... and just like that ... Ryan is batting 2nd and Figgy is hitting 8th.
I do soooo love a manager who seems to have a real sense of the balance between knee-jerk response and patient examination.
He sticks with Cust and Ryan ... and eventually they start hitting.
IMO, he waited the appropriate amount of time in moving Figgins for two reasons ...
First ... Figgy has a solid HISTORY of hitting .700 ... so, he deserves a longer leash than say, Ryan. But, the club obviously saw something in Ryan that they felt they could work with.
But, the more important reason to keep hitting Figgins #2 was that there wasn't a better option for most of the year. Heck, Kennedy was hitting CLEANUP due to the putrescence of the Ms lineup. You can't hit him everywhere. But, at this point ... with Ryan, Olivo, Smoak and Cust all hitting a little and Guti back, *NOW* he's actually got a little lineup flexibility that he didn't have previously.
I wholeheartedly agree on this one...Wedge is just looking better and better with every move...you just feel like he can't make a bad call.
We noticed a fine article on USSM / Brock & Salk today, revealing the cause of Pauley's success.This is getting to be a habit... wonder if KIRO will give it up for USSM tonight :- )............Followup to our own article: personally I wouldn't read Pauley's game as sustainable at *this* level. I mean, I guess it's possible that he's become Trevor Hoffman, but it looks more to me like he's just throwing at the peak of his abilities. Hotness happens, and Pauley's a bit of a novelty on the league, pitching under cover as the #3-4 man in the pen. He's throwing knuckleball-like changeups high in the zone, diving fastballs without real good command, and it's not a template you really build a career out of IMHO.If Pauley continued to get that amazing dive on his change and on his 88 slowball, he'd be above-average going forward, naturally -- one of the better RP's in the league, maybe approaching a Scot Shields Lite. Which would be fine with us.A Ryan Franklin career would be quite ambitious enough for him, think yew very much. But he's been a savior during the transition.