.
Michael Pineda had the Vanilla Ice "U Can't Touch This" stomp goin' on. He'd casually lean back and smoke that heater in there, while everybody in the stadium just sat there and enjoyed the swing-throughs. We count four guys like that in Mariner history: the Unit, Jeff Nelson, Michael Pineda, and Stephen Pryor.
.....................
Here are the AB's from Saturday:
....................
WHAAaaaaaa? Did F/X misclassify a 92 MPH pitch as a slider? What happened with that? Um, no. Check the Trout AB, four inches down the monitor, and you'll see two other sliders. The next one hit 93, and ...
On Saturday, Stephen Pryor THREW A SLIDER THAT WAS NINETY-FOUR MILES PER HOUR.
Aroldis Chapman's slider is 88 MPH. Randy Johnson's, in his prime, was 87-89 MPH. Henry Rodriguez' is 84 MPH. The fastest slider in baseball is was Fernando Rodney's, at 89 MPH. The fastest breaking pitch in baseball is probably Felix' changeup, which can sit at 90 MPH.
Had you ever seen a slider that was 94 MPH?
The slider, actually is. It breaks two inches gloveside, vs. vacuum. This is perfectly typical for a major league slider. As far as break -- it rises 3-4 inches relative to vacuum -- so the "sink" is kind of more like a cut fastball. Here, let's chart this:
| Pitch | Gloveside Break | Sink |
| ML cutter | -2 inches armside | 0 inches |
| ML slider | +3 inches gloveside |
3 inch sink |
| Pryor's slider | +3 inches gloveside | 3 inch rise |
So somebody could argue that Pryor's slider is a cut fastball. That somebody Would. Not. Be. Me. Pryor's four-seam fastball rises 10-12 inches, far more than other fastballs; therefore his "slider" has as much sink -- relative to his fastball -- as anybody's slider. And the gloveside break is certainly that of a slider.
The decisive thing is this: visually, from the CF camera, Pryor's 92-94 MPH slider absolutely has the break and parachute pop of a nickel slider, say, Hisashi Iwakuma's. It's just that Pryor's slider happens to travel faster than Iwakuma's fastball.
....................
Anyway. He's throwing a 94 slider, I'm not going to peg his natural velocity at 94. Are you? What I'm going to do is make sure he throws one clean inning from the full windup -- as it were -- so he can throw upper 90's rather than mid 90's.
Anyway again. The fourth pitch to Ianetta up there, what an ever-lovin' joy to behold. With two strikes, Ianetta's got to swing. The ladder fastball -- with 12 glorious inches of exploding rise just as Ianetta swings -- just blows him up into raspberry jelly. I got your coin of the realm right here, Larry m'man. Michael Pineda, have a nice life.
....................
The next detonation was of Mike "Felix Killer" Trout:
.....................................................
The fourth pitch, on a 1-2 count with Trout protecting the plate, was 98 MPH at Trout's cheekbone. The pitch sailed up like a banana. After Trout dove for cover, the look on his face reminded you of John Kruk against Randy Johnson in the All-Star game. Torii Hunter, next up, was equally alarmed. And are you going to rush the mound? Pryor looks like Clayface from Batman.
... So. 1-2 count. Here's 98 at your face. Next pitch? Enjoy it for yourself. Out on the edge, where Trout is scared to lean. He swung through feebly.
It's one reason I'm so madly in love with the concept of Stephen Pryor. Win or lose, it is not going to be fun to face the Mariners when they have players like this.
.
Based on the numbers (and they were on the same team for a lot of the year), Capps strikes out more batters than Pryor and has half the walk rate.
Capps' walk rate is right in there with Erasmo, Carraway, Beavan and Anthony Fernandez -- all of our Fister wannabes.
Just so y'know.
As I mentioned in my Bawcom profile, somebody is finding these guys:
Pryor -- Tennessee Tech (Ohio Valley Conference); 5th round 2010
Capps -- Mount Olive College, NC (Division II); 3rd round 2011
Carson Smith -- Texas State (Southland Conference); 8th round 2011
Logan Bawcom -- UT-Arlington (Southland Conference); trade from Dodgers
Give our off-the-beaten-path college scouts in the South a bunch of gold stars, raises, and a lifetime supply of breakfast biscuits at Hardee's.
That is earning your pay. Standing O for the scouts.
Any particular scouts get responsibility for Pryor, Capps, and Smith? Could see how Capps was a McNamara call out of a stock draft pool, but once you get 4th-round plus, you're talking about decisions outside the consensus.
Alvin Rittman signed Pryor – I think he’s with the Pirates now.
Garrett Ball got Capps. Garrett was also our NC regional scout, IIRC, so he was the eyes on the ground for Seager, Moran and Ackley.
We just have had a bunch of good scouts in the Zduriencik years. I'm hoping that Lopes is next in line for awesomeness, but we do have a nice collage of talent to get some luminaries out of. Zunino's ETA should be May+ of 2014 if he takes to AA like he took to Everett, Hultzen should compete for a starting spot in ST 2013...we just keep promoting talent.
At some point that should tip the scales in favor of a winning team, right? I still think we need one more hitter instead of relying on Carp (as we did Smoak before him) to be the MOTO hitter who makes this offense work, but we'll see what Jack comes up with. I can't complain about the young talent already on the team, and our bullpen is quickly becoming sadistically delightful. I LOL'ed at the "clayface" moniker, Doc - I wouldn't charge that mound either.
~G
Sometimes I worry about you, G. You remember Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann? Not always sure which of us is which, though...
How about an article on Garrett Ball, mayhaps? We should pitch in and buy Mr. Ball a lemynade.
...........
After the fact, it's easy to say, well, Everett's easy. He's not seeing many bendy pitches. Fact is, though, there are a whale of a lot of high draft picks who DON'T parachute into the drop zone like that - HR's and BB's and all the trimmings.
You guys feel any differently at all this month, about missing out on the two high school hitters? Or no? I do. It isn't always the pre-draft hype jobs who turn out to be the MVP candidates. Some of them are taken #18 and whatnot. You gotta let 'em play and see.
... used to routinely hit 91-93 with his slider when he was closing for the Giants just a year or so ago.
Fangraphs shows his slider at a (really hot) 86 MPH, and the 89 (plus) pitch that you're remembering it calls his cut fastball.
Sometimes "cutter" vs "slider" is a bit of a semantic debate... let's see. His cutter averaged 89 MPH and the movement ... it cut gloveside 2 inches and rose (compared to vacuum) by 5 inches. That's as against his fastball, which ran armside 2 inches and rose 8 inches.
2 inches gloveside, that's a whale of a lot of movement on a cut fastball, although since it didn't sink much more than his fastball I'd be inclined to classify it a super-cutter.
Pryor's 93 MPH slider cuts gloveside 3 inches and rolls off the table by 8-9 inches compared to his fastball. Probably have to call those two different types of pitches, but that's a great catch on Brian Wilson. I had no idea that he had such a great cutter. That's the closest thing I've seen to Rivera's (and now Felix') cutter.
Of course, Brian Wilson was a fairly effective pitcher there for a while....
I suppose I get to hope that we can Konerko a corner bat out of one of our three hitting catchers. Do I feel different about Zunino? He crushed it in Everett, which was definitely nice. I think he's gonna be a good catcher, I guess I just didn't want a good catcher. What'll be fun is if he's just a good hitter playing catcher. That's what AA should show us.
If he's Miguel Olivo with walks that's great for a catcher. If he's Paul Konerko but behind the plate, that's something else. Half his hits in Everett were XBH, while Buxton and Correa are struggling a bit to get their pro footing in rookie ball. They aren't exactly having A-Rod style landings - we have several teens matching or out-hitting them in the same leagues, with better secondary #s.
The guy with the monster landing thus far has been the college kid, which is how it should be, but expectations aren't always met. Zunino can't do any more to get me excited about him right now, and I really AM excited for him. I've come around on him meeting my "hitting catcher" expectations.
Now show me you're a hitter playing catcher, Mike - if you please. If he's that...then we absolutely rocked this draft. Again. Luckily for us, betting against Zduriencik's first round picks is usually unwise.
~G
If Zunino turns into Jason Varitek, that's great, but you can't have Varitek as the hub of your offense. We need Manny Ramirez/David Ortiz/ in the lineup, and then the Varitek/Millar/Damon level bats can raise the ship to contender status.
I feel fine about most of our current hitters. But Ackley has not yet turned into the product the college hitter of the decade should be. Montero through the first half was crushed by righties and by the Safe, though his 2nd half numbers look more like what you want from a MOTO hitter. Carp can't stay healthy. Guti's never been healthy. Smoak is a lost babe in Fangorn. Saunders has Hero Disease, which means he needs to NOT be in your MOTO so he can keep contributing. Ryan had a party when he got over .200. You can't hub an offense around a .250 hitting third baseman and your backup catcher (which is essentially what we're doing this year).
We don't have 40 HR guys hanging out in the minors. We don't have 30 HR ones. Even if Catricala climbs out of his cavern of despair or Franklin stays healthy at 2nd base or Romero and Miller keep hitting, they're not thumpers. Edgar could thump without home runs, but it's not easy, and none of our top minor leaguers like to take walks - except Zunino. Romero has walked 5 more times than Zunino in THREE HUNDRED more plate appearances.
I hate to put the pressure on Zunino to crush 30 bombs AND be a good defensive catcher AND get here quickly AND have a .380+ OBP...
But if one guy is gonna do all of that, it's him. So we'll see what he's got. My guess is he's more Matt Wieters than Buster Posey, but man... I can dream of Posey over the offseason, right?
~G
It's gonna be John Jaso :- )