Angels 3 …
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Q. What is the usual "script" for Erasmo Ramirez?
A. He paints with the fastball and uses two "plus" offspeed pitches to draw swinging strike threes.
That sounds cliche, but the healthy Erasmo Ramirez walked a mere 1.83 batters per nine innings in 2012. He's got Rob-O-Tronic mechanics, simply Madduxian down the centerline, and his command (then) was truly elite.
He's one of a very few pitchers who can walk 2 men per game, and yet draw 7+ strikeouts (Doug Fister, Cliff Lee, Adam Wainwright, Hisashi Iwakuma, now David Price). In 2012, he scored an 11.3% swinging strike rate -- compare Clayton Kershaw last year at 11.4%. At his best, he's actually one of the 10-20 top swing-and-miss guys in baseball.
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Q. Did Tuesday night's game follow this script?
A. Not at all. He had his "B" game out there, had all kinds of problems hitting his spots, missing lots of pitches wildly off the plate ...
He wound up with a 67% strike ratio, which is sky high. But as you can clearly see, a lot of that was because the Angels were going after sucker pitches and fouling them off. The strike ratio doesn't do justice to how much he labored.
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Q. He labored?
A. Blowers pointed out, on TV, that Erasmo has a tendency to go deer-in-headlights when things start going South on him. Sure enough, in the 4th inning, Josh Hamilton took this painted fastball down the 3B line for a double:
bility to use his tremendous changeup to bail himself out when in trouble.
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Q. Leaving him where?
A. He's an unusually talented young RHP with a medium amount of "makeup" issues.
Not so many young pitchers can fan > 7 batters and walk
Fortunately, the M's got Felix and Iwakuma up front. Stars & Scrubs, baby.
Enjoy,
Dr D