Room 1408 is a psychological horror film, based on the book of the same name by Stephen King. Batter #28 is a psychological torture implement, designed ingeniously by Craig Wright, Jay-Z, and Sgt. Wedge to break the heart and mind of Dr. Detecto.
.............
=== And Take That With You ===
I thought that Blake Beavan actually executed his pitches better on Sunday than he did when he locked down the Rangers. Fastball after fastball hit the batter's cold zone, he threw 67 of 98 strikes, his overhand curve bit hard, and he handed the ball to the setup man.
Oddly, the A's did not react to his fastball as though it were "long." Beavan got only 2 swinging strikes all day -- though he got 4 strikeouts. Why not? Couldn't tell you. Maybe the A's got a real good scouting report and game plan together. If so, it didn't help them much. They had 6 hits in 7 innings ... and three of those were parachute jobs.
The dude's sitting on a 7:1 command ratio -- last year his walks were 1+ and now guess what? His walks are 0+. Bob Tewksbury. No walks, no homers, let's see you string four hits to get anything decent on me.
He's 13-and-5 vs the Quality Start stat, lifetime. Teams that get QS win 67% of the time.
.
=== HITTER #28 ===
Which is the Hollywood sequel to Room 1408, or whatever that horror movie was, or am I confusing that with Brad Miller's OPS, or Carter Capps' kilometers per hour. I'm not thinking very clearly at the moment, sorry.
.........
It's okay, in the short term, that Tom Wilhelmsen is into 6 out of 11 baseball games. It's even okay that Wilhelmsen is taking the ball in the 7th.
What's not okay is that Wilhelmsen is getting up to get hot, in other games too, and what's not okay is that Eric Wedge has two (2) pitchers he can use to protect a lead.
.........
Blake Beavan broke Craig Wright's "Magic 28 Rule" today. Never, never, never let your starter face the leadoff hitter for the fourth time. Your starter is out of gas, and the leadoff guy has seen 15 differen' of his pitches by that point.
You get killed by the 28th hitter of the game. Wright may be the game's best math/scouting sabermetrician, and he says "the first team to implement this will have a huge advantage."
Beavan threw to Jemile Weeks with the game on the line. Guess what happened?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Guess?
.
.
.
.
.
.
What do you think occurred?
.
.
.
.
.
Beavan threw a sterling at-bat and struck Weeks out. Ja Vunderbar.
Win the battle, lose the war. Game in, game out, if they got the lead then Wedge is desperately having to force the SP to hand the ball to Tom Wilhelmsen. He knows that won't work. You know that won't work. Zduriencik sure as shootin' knows it.
Hey, man, I agree with Wedge. Leads are precious, and who do you feel good about in a 5-3 game with 40,000 people in the stadium?
I'm not saying that Capps is going to strike out the side on 9 pitches. ... he'll need 10, 11. This is the bigs; let's don't be silly.
.......
After Capps gets here, it's a month before Wedge trusts him to hold a lead. So ..... start the countdown. Tuesday.
Failing that, they better pick a #3 guy to hold leads. That #28, #29, #30 batter thing is going to bite them in the backside.
.
.
Tom's goong to finish the year competing for the innings pitched title at this point, hope we have a blow out soon so Iwakuma or Furbush can earn a little trust. Wedge certainly likes having a well he can go to till its dry
Wilhelmson can't be the only reliever we use. We saw this last year when Wedge figured out that Pauley and League were the only elievers he could trust. And then we blew out Pauley's arm and traded him for doodly.
We need to find four arms...not two. Gimme Capps and E-Ram on a regular basis please.
Didn't see the start, but maybe Beavan really is Fister 2.0. If so, that's a valuable piece.
If you're looking at gameday-like apps for the inors, the pitch counts frequently reflect only the pitches that result in a play 9one-pitch outs, 3 pitch Ks, 4-pitch walks).
Were you listening to the game or are you basing it on pitch charts from a gameday app?
Capps struck out the side on 9 pitches on Saturday.
Come Sunday, Stephen Pryor decided he didn't like having that gauntlet slapped in his face and HE struck out the side on 9 pitches.
And then came back out for the next inning, struck out the next batter on three straight pitches, got a one pitch out, and used just 3 more pitches to strike out ANOTHER batter.
2 IP, 5 K, 16 pitches. Anything you can do...
But it was a game in which the Generals had no offense. The Generals lost the game, but their bullpen pitched 11 innings and gave up one run. Moran pitched 2 entire innings using just 8 pitches, and he struck out a guy. FIVE one-pitch at-bats and a K.
Capps was weary - took him 11 pitches to get through an inning, and he walked a dude to go with his 2 Ks. Definitely not sharp...
We could swap Capps and Pryor into the big-league pen right now and be better for it. Moran will be a nice 2nd lefty at some point very soon.
Our BOR starters are beginning the year better than I expected. Noesi and Beavan have fighting spirit, and Millwood's starting off the year with something left in the tank.
But they're gonna need a bullpen backing them up. The Ms have a long man in Ramirez, but your starter needs a bad day before those come in to play. Furbush is an acceptable bullpen lefty but he's not a killer yet. Delabar is shaky. If we're going with a 7 man pen then add a couple of 97 mph howitzers to the thing and take Wilhelmsen off the hook for all the important innings of the year.
Please?
And as for Beavan...the guy is sticking at a decent velocity and being remarkably effective for a guy with show-me breaking pitches and an accuracy-based fastball attack. He keeps surprising me, but it looks like he's gonna be a #4 starter in this league for a while.
BTW, when Beavan first showed up in our minor league system he was throwing about 87-88. In 2011 in the bigs? 90.6. 2012? 90.6.
Apparently he's comfortably 3 mph faster now than when he got here. Same with Erasmo's jump since Elliott took over the minor league training regimen. Same with Carraway. Same with Fister.
Maybe all that is coincidence. Maybe we finally found a way to take advantage of strike-throwers with iffy fastballs.
If we have the tools scouts to find 97 mph death stars and the training program to properly calibrate X-wings to shoot wampa-rat-sized targets...
Picking the proper staff in a year or so is gonna be deliciously hard - but because of too many options instead of too few. Won't that be a nice change.
I'd prefer that start getting hard right about now, though. Promotions for the AA killers, please.
~G
Edit: In case you weren't aware, Pryor has the following AA line:
30.1 IP, 1.48 ERA, 3.6 H / 2.4 BB / 11.0 K per 9
He was our Capps-level pick, one year prior (no pun intended). We've drafted 2 monster bullpenners 2 years running, and I'm not sure how much longer they need down in the minors to prove they can get hitters out. What's a good time limit to establish dominance?
That will dictate who and when. I haven't looked in a while but if they aren't on the 40-man then we'll have to trade a couple guys out first.
Considering the batting order by number not name, which order number leads
off the inning the most, over the course of a sseason? The number one batter
all ways leads off the first inning.
Possible relievers on 40-man, not on 25-man:
Chance Ruffin - will be back, scuffled a bit in AAA in an outing.
Yoervis Medina - in AA, not ready in any sense.
Erasmo Ramirez - in AAA, being used as a starter for some reason.
Shawn Kelley - arm's been in the shop more than a 1984 Yugo. Pitching well so far.
Most monstrous relief arms in the minors currently:
Carter Capps - ridonkulous
Stephen Pryor - see: Carter Capps
Jonathan Arias - unhittable FB/slider with a walk problem, 7:1 control in A+
Tyler Burgoon - former closer in college, future pen staple in bigs, in A+ now
Dead weight on 40-man:
Johermyn Chavez, OF (A+ numbers didn't make it to AA)
Carlos Triunfel, SS/2B (In what universe does he play for us? What's his trade value?)
Mauricio Robles (he's rehabbing from major arm surgery, no one's gonna take him)
Hisashi Iwakuma (hey, if we're not gonna use him...)
George Sherrill ("inflamed flexor bundle" is often "UCL injury in disguise")
Yoervis Medina (he has decent pitches, but he can't PITCH)
Chone Figgins (but seriously...)
We can find a way to add Pryor and Capps to the 40-man. If we decide not to do that at the moment, Ruffin and Kelley are sitting in AAA waiting to come back. Ruffin just got roughed up a little (not entirely his fault) and Kelley looked verrrry mushy in the Spring, but they are options.
We can't run with a 2-man bullpen in any game that we have a lead in. We hope to have lots of leads this year, right?
Wilhelmsen can't pitch a hundred innings, and if you even want to entertain trading League if we're out of it in June (what could you get from the Giants for a closer, say, RIGHT NOW?) then you can't just run poor Tom out there for 2-innings saves all the time. We need a far more robust pen and we need it soon, to give ourselves options whether we win or lose.
~G
The Jackson box scores for all games can be accessed here:
http://www.milb.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?t=t_sch&cid=104&sid=t104&stn=true
It would appear the pitch counts are accurate.
Quibble-Meister D would react by saying that Doug Fister is a unique physical pitcher, a sttrrrrraaaaaaange intersection of height x grace. And it results in a fastball that is uniquely long, moving and deceptive. Also his feel for offspeed, and his command, are way out there at like 5th sigma.
Asking a lot for Beavan to do that, so IMHO it's kind of like saying that Hector Noesi has Felix Hernandez' pitches, which Noesi does. But right Dr., if we're speaking loosely then yeah. "Sneaky fastball command pitcher with guile who comes out of nowhere to run a 110 ERA+" ...
13 out of 18 quality starts to begin his career, wow. And Doug Fister's first season wasn't star quality; he needed some time to leap plateaus.
:daps:
Come Sunday, Stephen Pryor decided he didn't like having that gauntlet slapped in his face and HE struck out the side on 9 pitches.
And then came back out for the next inning, struck out the next batter on three straight pitches, got a one pitch out, and used just 3 more pitches to strike out ANOTHER batter.
Capps is easy enough to understand.
Can you, in 1-2 paragraphs, help me understand what makes Stephen Pryor so much better than other AA/AAA relief stars? We realize that he throws 95-96, as do some other high minors closers -- and as does Steve Delabar.
Wedge called Pryor out along with Capps, and the M's have Capps setting up Pryor, so this is not rhetorical.
Just look at the first entry on the 15th for the other team. A guy named Avilian went 5 innings allowing a couple of runs, fanned 3 and walked FIVE...his pitch count for five innings...47. 27 strikes, 20 balls...what a coincidence that the 20 balls were exactly the number you needed to get to 5 walks!
Sorry...but I now doubt the veracity of all of the supposed 3 K, 9 pitch outings people have reported from AA...I think they're all just the minimum pitches reported to account for all plays.
1. You have whichever batter leads off the 2nd inning the most, presumably the #5 hitter (who you don't select for R scored first; you select him for RBI first). In subsequent innings this "most likely to follow the last out of inning #X" will dissolve into oblivion and not be important.
2. Whichever batters HIT the most (in the whole game) will lead off the most, in late innings -- #2 batter, then #3 batter, etc.
3. IMHO it's not a factor that deserves consideration from the manager's desk, in proportion to other factors (such as getting the most AB's to the best hitters).
Good stuff Anon.
Good catch Matty. Guess we have to hold off on the 3-pitch strikeout cheering.
Which has 0 to do with the I/O question of whether Carter Capps and Stephen Pryor are awesome :- )
Back channel he has been yelling at me for a long time. Carter Capps! Check out Carter Capps! Where's the POTD on Capps! This guy is unreal! What's your problem, get with it on Capps!
So, um, does JJ Putz have a weapon?
But JJ's true brilliance was that forkball. He didn't just have heat.
Pryor's got a hammer slider that used to fall out of the zone, but he's fine-tuned it to make that thing stay for a called strike recently. It kinda works like an 85 mph splitfinger now with late bite. I'll see if I can video him next time so you can see it.
So: 94-99 mph heat, 85ish slider/split.
He's basically throwing like Papelbon at this point. And he has that same bull-in-a-china-shop look on the mound, which helps.
~G
Haven't seen that real-world breakdown on 40-man decisions. In two seconds I had a feel for what it would take to get Capps and Pryor in here. (Nothing.) Ridonkulous indeed G.
Kelley and Sherrill, you would never regret, in any universe.
Medina, you'd have to make a whale of a case for his keeping others off the 40-man slot for the entire duration (until he's helping the M's win). There are 9,000 guys who will need that slot during the two years (?) that Medina needs in the oven, IF he's ever going to help.
Medina's not in HQ's 50-man deep overview of M's prospects, by the way.
........
The 40-Man Roster Board Game is much more complex than we fans tend to realize -- for example, which other up-and-comers need to be fit onto the roster this year also.
Could be (undoubtedly is) that the M's know things we don't about Yoervis Medina, but ... can these unknowns be ENOUGH to PAY prices such as the blowout of Tom Wilhelmsen's elbow?
Everything you do has a risk, including doing nothing ... :- )
And I'm pretty sure it was "the side on nine pitches" (it was in the background).
I did not listen to Pryor, you are correct. I'll see if I can't get you a pitch count next time, but your idea that they aren't giving all the pitch counts sounds right for some of these surprising totals.
But when I watched Paxton start, the commentators made a point to mention that he threw just over 80 pitches in his first outing and to note that he was still in the 80s before his last batter of the day in his 2nd outing. Same with Hultzen - they gave pitch counts for the game I was watching, and it matched the box score at the end.
So I'm not sure why some of the numbers would be accurate and some would not be. Definitely something to keep an eye on - thanks for pointing it out.
~G
Didn't know that Pryor hit UPPER 90's. I thought he had Delabar velocity.
..........
The slider... Throws it close to as consistently as Wilhelmsen did his hook last year, let's say?
No matter. We're talking about somebody to pitch in, as it were, in the 7th inning, not somebody for the closer's hot seat.
He's been very accurate with it in AA, and he's figured out where to place the fastball.
I'll see if I can re-watch some of the minor league games, pull video for Capps and Pryor. It won't have MPH on it (unless the announcers mention it) but we can figure out the balls-and-strikes thing as well as show the potion and pitch flight.
I'll see what I can do. Post will follow this evening if possible. MiLB.com didn't archive minor league games in the past, but it seems they might now, and if they do I'll take advantage.
~G
Pryor maxed at 97.1 -- averaged 95
Capps maxed at 99 -- averaged 98, threw 10 of 11 for strikes
good catch, ghost - I wasn't discriminating enough.
Whoever was feeding the data for Gameday on 4/15 was "mailing it in" but for the game Capps threw 9 pitches for 9 strikes on 4/14, the pitch counts appear accurate -- when you go through pitch-by-pitch it appears to be correct.
I'd like to know which ROOKIE reliever averaged 98 MPH, threw strikes, and who did not splash on the league.
It might be possible for the league to CATCH UP to a guy who pumps 99 MPH in there for strikes ... say, in year three. But name me somebody who threw like Capps, who got snuffed in year one.
We infer that Jack Zduriencik is well aware that Carter Capps would be an impact add to the Seattle Mariners. His reasons for delaying this are for us to speculate about as fans.
good stuff G.
The reason that some of the pitch counts are good and some are not is the same reason that some ST games had good pitch counts and some did not. The Pitch F/X system is still being installed in every minor league park in baseball, as well as every ST park. That is not yet a completed process. In fact, when I was looking for jobs in baseball last month, I found a lot of ads calling for people to run the pitch F/X system to test that it was working or to help install it at various parks.
So...the games where the scorer has pitch F/X are going to have the right pitch counts, and the games where the scorer does not...probably won't.
I'm glad to hear that some of the awesome reports are verified. :D And I certainly wasn't saying that Capps is no good or anything...I'd like to see him promoted as well. Just throwing out a caution that the pitch counts can't be trusted without verifying that the whole box score makes some sense. That's an easy thing to check on when you report from the box score though...it will stand out rather badly in the games without pitch F/X.
Good show...keep the minor league good times rolling. :D
MiLB.com doesn't save their prior games, more's the pity, and the Generals are not one of the participants in the MiLB.TV promotion, so we only get their games when they go to a team that is a part of it.
That doesn't happen again for 3-4 weeks. Now I really wish I'd made screen captures of the games as they were happening.
Still, Capps did strike out the side on 9 pitches as I remembered:
Batter 1:
Foul
Foul
Swinging strike
Batter 2:
Called strike
Called strike
Swinging strike
Batter 3:
Swinging Strike
Foul
Foul tip
The pitch breakdowns the following day are not representative, though. Excuse me while I go complain to the lazy people at MiLB.com. ;-)
~G
So I still don't get that explanation. Box scores from 2004 had "86 pitches / 53 strikes." It's not a hardship to give me that.
Maybe they've gotten lazy this year and are simply converting over the pitch f/x numbers and stadiums that don't yet have it are just getting the dump of strikes, hits and walks to process instead of real numbers.
For me, that sucks. Makes life much harder.
~G
THey're no paying for pitch trackers/real scorers for the box scores anymore...they're paying for technicians to make the pitch F/X automation work. It's cheaper.
(home of the Mississippi Braves) since tonight's Gameday is the same way. I don't recall encountering that before, but maybe I never inspected closely enough.
I really don't think it has anything to do with f/x, just whether the scorekeeper reporting to Gameday is doing his/her job.
Speaking of which:
Paxton: 4.2 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 8 BB, 4 K
I assume that much is right, but, yeah, the 59 pitches doesn't add up.