Malcontent on Gallardo
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Malcontent (as well as his virtual reclamation project, HWMNBN) has well earned a couple of bows in the aftermath of Gallardo's shutout. And he has more info-tainment for us:
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For practically the first time in his career (The first time anywhere near this level since 2010!), Yovani Gallardo is throwing at the top of the zone aggressively with his 2 fastballs. Similar things are true of his Slider. His change-up is new and improved, with a higher level of aggression and confidence than previous seasons it seems. He still isn't getting the bottom of the strike zone like I want, but he's making things work anyway. Don't miss the incredibly low exit velocity he's allowed over all 4 starts this season, yesterday wasn't a fluke.
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Yes, all those are actually links, and good ones :- ) the second one especially -- where he says "aggressively with his 2 fastballs" -- gives a good look at the number of high heaters. Good on yer Mal!
Gallardo's batted-ball velocity has been around 85-86 MPH early on, which is very good in a short set of IP, and it does not surprise the Mainframe because --- > he does have 3 different breaking pitches off his fastball, and he is, ah, "careful" with his fastball as innings eaters are. So it wouldn't surprise any if he maintained an ability to keep hitters mostly off their back feet.
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There isn't any doubt that Gallardo right now has more juice in his arm than he did in 2016. Baffling, and pleasing. Has anybody suggested ANYthing, I mean word One, as to why his velocity is suddenly back to 2011? Bottle it and give it to WBC-san too. Whoop! Didn't mean to go there, "bottles" where we find enhanced performance. We don't judge. +2.7 MPH over the winter is what matters to Dr. D.
Also, there wasn't any doubt that on Sunday, he found a way to make batters respect his fastball (using the ladder approach to camoflage the lack of command).
Personally I have no idea whether, next start, Yovanni is going to come out and use his fastball effectively up-and-down like he did Sunday. And whether he's going to use his curve and change heavily, as opposed to his slider. If he does do this in the next several starts, at 92 MPH, then for me it would warrant a complete re-assessment of the SP #5 chess position. The guy we saw Sunday could easily run a 100 ERA+ or better. Of course, the Drew Smyly we saw against Venezuela could have easily run a 200 ERA+ or better. :- )
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If Gallardo did have a bounceback year, went Chris Young for us or something, that would be (for me) tantamount to adding a David Price or something. What's more important, to upgrade from 100 to 140 ... or from 60 to 100? That would be my own emotional gain on it, anyway.
Nice going Malcontent.
BABVA,
Dr D