Miranda vs Carrasco
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PITCHER BATTER MATCHUPS
Here are the backgrounds. At BJOL there was an interesting statement last week, "All managers should always ignore all such data." I hae me do'ots, but in this case nobody has seen anybody much yet. Which favors the pitchers, whatever they tell you.
Key thing for Miranda is always those two or three warning-track balls, and the 3rd time through the lineup. See what approach he uses after they're used to his sneaky fastball and his change on the same tunnel.
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TREVOR PLOUFFE
Interesting little riddle for us as sabes that Matty posted. Why isn't Trevor Plouffe doing better? (Keep in mind that if Edwin Diaz' component skills match --- > Lee Smith, Dennis Eckersley, Mariano Rivera, Trevor Hoffman and Joe Shlabotnik, that is considered a 'Best. Case. Outcome.' Comp groups always have scrubeenies.)
But Dr. D's first proposal here is that we check Plouffe's "back leg specials." He doesn't hit many homers. All those other guys, they get their pitch, they pull it 400 feet in the air and she's gone. Plouffe gets his pitch and lines one into the gap. Granted, Nelson Cruz might only have +2 MPH over some other guy on launch velocity but it's 102, 82, 102, 82, not 90 90 90. Tony Blengino was also baffled at (say) Boomstick's ability to "pull the ball in the air selectively." It's not rocket science. These guys are setting themselves up to hit homers. //
Secondly, Haniger is finding his sea legs. These are his FIRST at-bats as he orients himself. Haniger is also going to hit scads of homers.
Thirdly, I disilike Z% - OOZ%. Much better to use EYE and much better to consider total pitch-stalking, as Matt noted with his P/PA. It's one thing to fan 140 times and walk 80; it's another thing to fan 70 times and walk 40. Notice how different Z% / OOZ% would be from Z-O.
But yeah. That is one WHALE of a comp group for Haniger.
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SUB-PLOTS OF THE WEEK
1 Motter continuing to load up and back-leg one or two balls per game, a la Brian Dozier
2 Ben Gamel's OBP skills threatening a semi-Gardner half season
3 Guillermo Heredia continuing to fly under the radar on the field, if not in the weight room
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IWAKUMA
This guy's fastball was literally 82 MPH in the first inning and yet -- hilariously -- he found a way to make them swing willow switches at gnats. He did this by throwing a blizzard of 78 MPH sliders and 77 MPH shuutos into the low part of the strike zone. (Well, the cutter would go onto the black.) Then he'd "hump up" and throw 84-86 and it looked fast, like Moyer's used to look kinda fast.
Brooks has him using a Mike Marshall 33-33-33 split, only 28 fastballs of any kind. You want to make yourself useful, Gentle Denizen :- ) search the almanacs for the most-similar starting pitcher (since 1980) to this approach.
Don't forget it was a lockdown performance. Per Shandler Quality Starts it was bascially a 5/5. Hey, we SAID that Hisashi Iwakuma was going to be a very, VERY clever smoke-and-mirrors huckster once he got to that point. It's a legitimate question whether he (uniquely) can figure out a way to cobble himself some 5 IP, 2 ER outings from this kind of stuff.
It takes a whale of a lot of guts to solve a fastball problem by throwing no fastballs. HEH! But it earns Iwakuma a stock upgrade on SSI: "hold."
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BABVA,
Dr D