Q. How come French's fastball is minus-minus but Fister's is 55? It looks like they throw at pretty much the same speed.
A. French's fastball has NOT been minus-minus in his Seattle games.
Remember that we had French's fastball as minus-minus based on his game in Seattle, and on his 86 FBv after 30 innings, as well as on his terrible run values.
At the time of the trade, French was #101 out of 104 ML starters for fastball velo, or something like that.
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Gotta square that away, amigo. You're going to forever link me with saying that French throws "minus-minus" at 88-89, if you don't take a sec on this one, and digest that I claimed it to be "minus-minus" WHEN HE WAS IN DETROIT.
He had a 30 fastball when it was 85-86, straight, and being lit up for double-digits run values.
A fastball is minus-minus if you can sit offspeed and adjust fastball. That was the case in the Det-Sea game. It has not been the case here.
On the radio, French said that he "went through a dead-arm period" in Detroit, throwing 85+, but that he was feeling better now. Therefore the discrepancy, I guess.
Is he through the dead-arm? I dunno. After about 60 pitches last start, his arm keeled over again.
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According to both Wakamatsu and French, the adjustment was to get on top of the ball more. If French DOES throw hard enough to keep batters from sitting in between, the entire evaluation changes.
French shows the ball early, IMHO, and throws it straight, IMHO, and with no life, IMHO. Even at 88-89, I hate his fastball. He's thrown 10 innings for us, and logged a 7/7 control ratio with a 6.97 ERA. But you are optimistic, so we'll see.
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Really good movement will cause an ML scout to upgrade a fastball an entire grade OR MORE. Everybody in baseball will tell you that they'd rather see an 89 fastball with excellent movement, than a 92 fastball that is straight as a string.
Some guys' FB's move so much that they throw entire games based on nothing else. Scott Erickson and Derek Lowe, among many others, just threw 90 mph swerveballs and let the chips fall where they may.
Tuesday, Fister's movement was just about that good.
Brooks has Fister's FB as moving in on RH batters by 9-13 inches. Whatever the tracker says, it was definitely cutting real hard, and consistently. And when it's low, it dives. On the Konerko strikeout, Paulie swung and whoooooosh, like a Gaylord Perry spitter, it just wasn't there. It wasn't anywhere near his bat.
Fister's FB, I like. And wouldn't have been in the least shy about saying I didn't. :- )
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There's another opinion you can take, if you want a 2nd opinion:
Fister threw 6 innings against the White Sox, throwing 70% fastballs, and allowed one (1) hit -- a dribbler by Jim Thome that was an infield hit only because of the shift.
And how many hard-hit balls did you see? IIRC, there were 4 fly balls all night -- all of them skied. Check me on that.
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One thing you can do, yourself, to check a pitcher's movement: watch the catcher's glove very late in the pitch. Tuesday, Joh's mitt would hold steady after release, and then begin its sideways movement as the ball was 2/3 of the way to the plate -- and then it would move a foot, a foot-and-a-half. It reminded me of Freddy Garcia's rookie year.
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Don't have anything personally against French, any more than I had anything against Jason Vargas. I just think they throw FB's that are easy to see, and that are going to be launched by AL muscly men.
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If French gets on top of the ball and stays at 88-90, personally I give his FB a 40 (lack of movement and deception), though his curve gets a 65.
Fister, Tuesday, I give it a 55 -- mediocre velocity but genuinely special movement. We'll see where it is next time.
Cheers,
Dr D