Madeline Kahn......The Bavarian Bombshell, The Teutonic Titwillow....Lili, Lili, Lili!!
Ahhhhhh......that made my morning, Doc.
It's also twue that Elias is getting better before our eyes: His BB rate is down .5 from last year and he just wiped out a bumch of MLB slugger-type RHB's with his curve.
You're right about his curve really speeding up his heater, as he throws a twue Moyer-style "yakker" (Moyer, of course, threw 93 only in his dreams). Yesterday I had just returned from a steelhead day-trip and watched all of the first inning then bits and pieces thereafter, as I was dinking around the house. In that bits and pieces process I didn't really catch just how dominant the curve was to RHB's. As highlight reels always are, the one linked above was a blast to watch: it underscores what Elias can do....and is doing more and more of all the time. Take away his terrible-no good start of a week ago and he's running a 2.61 ERA. He's had excellent starts in 5 of his last 7 efforts. I want to think of him as "a kid," but at 26 years old he really isn't.
Minus Felix, I'm not sure he isn't my favorite M's pitcher to watch. Because of his style he will never be the "hottest" thing on the staff, but he's going to throw us a ton of quality innings, keep us in games (even when he doesn't have his best stuff), work up an down, in and out, and he's going to learn a bit from Felix. I think he already is.....
Luis Tiant is, of course, the prototypical Cuban pitcher from back in our day, Doc. But I don't really remember Tiant that well until he was with Boston throwing 14 different pitches, each from 14 different angles.
But I do remember a Cuban lefty, a fast ball, curve ball, change up lefty, who was pretty dang good. He won a Cy and strung together a bunch of quality years, a couple of which were dominant. That's Mike Cuellar, of course. Even when Cuellar won his Cy ('69), he was often seen the third horse in the stable. That continued, despite the fact that he had a 6-year run ('69-'75) where he AVERAGED better than 20 wins a season.
Generally, Cuellar got better with age. There's going to be a lot of that factor in Elias. He pitches with an unperturbed urgency, if such a marriage is possible.
Plus he's got agallas y tripas in spades.
He's ours and I love it!
I haven't smoked a see-gar in years, but I may have to light one up for our own Cuban (not quite a) kid! A see-gar, a rum and coke and a bit of Desi Arnaz to celebrate our own El Babalu!