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Q.  Wow.  19 swings and misses, by the Oakland A's, no less.  Must have followed SSI's prescription?

A.  Nah.  He wasn't using the fastball up.

Reminds us (in pale imitation) of Bill James getting hired by the Boston Red Sox, and the saberdweebs asking him whether he was going to get Nomar to draw some walks and become an intelligent hitter.

"I'm not going to Boston to teach Nomar Garciaparra how to hit," Bill said acidly.

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Q.  What happened, then?

A.  Felix' heater was as vicious as we've ever seen it, but in Michael Pineda style, Randy Johnson style.  Jered Weaver style.  Not in the Clemens-Schilling heritage.  He threw it 95, painted on the black, as opposed to 97 at the letters.  Which also produces an effect that is quite pleasant.

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Q.  95 MPH?  Since when?

A.  F/X gives his average velocity as about 91.5 MPH, these days, but last night he was in excess of 94 MPH.  Average.  He was back up to 96 at times.

Recall, too, that just like Chris Young releases the ball closer-than-average to home plate, so does Felix.  The King gets a +1, +2 MPH "sneaky" velocity on his own fastball.  So by the time it's all said and done, last night he had 96 MPH hot sauce, and he was routinely painting it, one fastball's width off the strike zone.

It was a truly vicious fastball, thrown with gusto, thrown with the intent to miss bats.  At times, he caught them looking offspeed on 1-2 counts and threw the heater by them.  A pitcher's favorite kind of strike three.

......

The same act can be executed with very different "ki."

A husband, you realize, can bring home a bouquet of flowers with the intent of charming his wife, or with the intent of being caustic ... a pitcher can throw a fastball at the outside corner with the intent of getting to the postgame beer as soon as possible.  Or with the intent to deliver an ice pick to the batter's left kidney.  

With Felix last night, it was the latter.  Or so it says here.  His "ki" was murderous, rather than dominating.

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Q.  So armed with a Pineda-style fastball ...

A.  The two* breaking pitches were worse than, um, Pineda's own slider. 

* = I know, I know

As we all know, the dry spitter / changeup is -3 MPH off his fastball, and last night (relatively) six inches, tight late break.  Did you ever try to hit a high school pitcher who threw a legit drop of four inches?  That's when most people quit baseball.  Last night, the A's looked like those high schoolers.  

......

They were locked in mortal combat with the 94* (96) MPH fastball painted, and the 90 MPH dry spitter ... when he threw the slower curve or slider?  They froze and tipped their caps.  Oh, the first 10 or 15 such that I saw, they were just Tip Yer Cap.

As the game went on, Felix developed a taste for those poached strikes, and wound up grabbing quite a few of them.  

Felix' "slider" usually breaks back to 0 horizontally, not to -4 inches into a left hand hitter.  Usually it "drops" to 0 vertically, not to -4 inches, like a curve.  On Friday, the slider and curve were essentially one pitch along a gradient continuum, all 82-85 MPH:

The velocity alone would have left the A's helpless, but ... Blowers characterized them as "wiffleball" pitches.  When he's got a hook like this, I dunno why he doesn't throw it once a batter.  :: shrug ::

Pitch	# of times thrown	# of times put into the field of play
Curve + Slider	21	0
fb	54	8
ch	24	6

The A's were dipping their knees, "cheating" on the changeup while swinging under it, and managing to ping it into play rather squarely.  But they were quite obviously, even to the fans, saying "If you throw a curve you can have it."

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Q.  Felix' so-called "Nasty Mode" means what?

A.  He gets annoyed that somebody scored on him, or he gets jacked up in front of the home crowd ... he gets interested in humiliating people.  His weapons can be adapted to that purpose.  It takes an extra level of physical, and emotional, energy to do so.

Prior to WWII, the books always talked about "saving your best stuff" for when it mattered.  It's not a light thing to ask a pitcher to "bear down" .... every time.  It's like yellow-highlighting every word in your biology textbook.  Felix yellow-highlighted every pitch he threw in the Supreme Court last night.

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Q.   He's at 12.7 strikeouts per game, with a crazy whiff rate of 16%.  This against LH lineups who know him like the backs of their hands.  Is his K rate going over 10 this year?

A.  It's gone from 8, to 8.5, to 8.7, to 9.5 last year as his xFIP dove to 2.66.  It could get to 10 simply through accumulated wisdom.

If he pitches for a contending team, and the stands get fuller, and he's got a rotation full of young hotshots pushing him a little bit ... I could see him developing an interest in showing off.

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Q.  Should McClendon have "indulged" him that 8th inning fiasco?

A.  The game was over, 6-0, and the air had gone out of the game.  Felix went out with the attitude of doing a soft shoe dance to the crowd, rather than murdering souls.  You know, like Mel Brooks' "Alien" ...

The single wittiest comment Mel Brooks ever made.  :- )  Ridley Scott was a little too proud of his Alien entrance, wasn't he?

If I'd been Lloyd McClendon, I'd have done the same thing:  make a statement to Felix Hernandez that I realize it's his team more than it is mine.  Now that we've gotten that straight, I'll make the pitching changes if that's all right, Mr. Hernandez.

BABVA,

Dr D