Love at 425 .. er, Wins at 82 ... er ..
But I'll give you a dollar if'n you can tell us what MUTR is sposed to mean

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There has never been a Seattle Mariner pitcher who threw 82 MPH and was anything other than a bad punch line.  In fact there has only ever been maybe 1-2 American League pitchers who ever (since 2002) did it.  So SSI figgered it can't be done.

Iwakuma's last two starts did a whale of a lot to convince us otherwise.  This is two games in a row in which he locked down the enemy at 81, 82 MPH.  In fact his game logs:

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Notice the 0's, 1's, 2's, and 3's in the Earned Runs column.  Every time but once.  And he's doing this with a most strange toolbox:

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Iwakuma throws these pitches with REAL PRECISION - with him now, the difference is between RIGHT ON the knees vs FIVE INCHES ABOVE the knees.  One will keep him out of trouble; a miss barely into the strike zone and he's liable to give up a mortar shot.  But he can consistently pull off this precision.

The Ultra Felix Pitch Sequences (TM) came hot and heavy on Wednesday.  Two examples, from the first two hitters of the 3rd inning:

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The pitches to Revere:  81 split, 81 split, 79 split, 84 "fastball" at the knees outside.  Line out.

The pitches to Pennington:  78 split, 79 slider, 79 slider line drive single.  You see there isn't tons of margin for error.  But on the other hand Iwakuma can still "hump up" to 88, 89 MPH; he throws 83 MPH because he's flicking darts.

Fact is it's been working.  Mercy sakes alive, his ERA is 90 and headed for better territories.  As is his 16:12 CTL ratio, manifesting the necessary 1 BB per game the last few times out.  Could be he's getting the hang of the 1 BB, 3 K game.  Maybe this is f'r real.

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GREAT CATCH!

There were a good 3 outs that were directly on the warning track for Hisashi, including a stolen home run.  Don't bother me none.  That's part of the deal-io here.  Next up:  an article on the recent precedents for Love At 82 MPH.

BABVA,

Dr D

Comments

1

Make it work at 82-84 on his fastball?  And that was in his heydey with Seattle, he had some good years averaging 81 with Philly.  Fangraphs has Greg Maddux averaging 85.8 mph in 2002 and rolling down hill from there to the end in 2008, during which he ran a 3.92 ERA with just shy of 4 Ks for every walk.  Is Hisashi in this category maybe?

2

1 article over expands on this ... 

graphics in the above post dont seem to be showing on my phone ... they do on my iMac

3
tjm's picture

And Iwakuma has a wider array of pitches than either of those guys. Maddux basically never threw a breaking ball. You can do it, but as noted by Doc, you gotta have exceptional control. I might add you also gotta have exceptional courage or maybe a death wish.

4

Final five seasons:  "Heater" was between 83.9 and 85.1 each year.

Zoom.

Was still pretty good. ERA+'s were 121, 109, 99, 112, 108.

5

When he took the pitch off his knee.  At a minimum he's been soaking up innings but if you break it down he's been a decent #4 at least in my opinion.  Losing him would hurt quite a bit especially assuming Moore is still not coming up until August or some such.  The depth has already been leveraged and that bar is bending.

MUTR?

Made up their resume? 

Muddy up their ride

Muddy up the resources

Mariners under Trouts Reeboks?

May umps transplant retinas? 

6

My Uncle (is) Teddy Roosevelt

Markan Uncial Textus Receptus

Mikey's Underoos Take Revenge

Maybe Unicorns T'ain't Real

Music Under The Radar

Am I getting closer? :)

7
Guate Dave's picture

... could somebody say what exactly happened with that comebacker? Was he shaken? Injured? The article on the M's site wasn't too illuminating. Found this quote from Servais interesting though: "Sometimes, when it goes with Kuma, it goes pretty quick. That's kind of what we were seeing, so we went ahead and made the change."

Begs the question why didn't they go ahead and make the change before the 6th? Ah well. All's well that ends well, right? 

8

There were 3 coaches and 2 trainers behind the mound while he threw a few pitches.   They went back in the dugout and he continued the inning.  There didn't seem to be any effect then, he may be bruised or sore now.

10

While I am sure Kuma said he was fine, after a 15+ minute bottom half of the inning there should at a MINIMUM been somebody warm in the bullpen to start the 6th... versus having Kuma go 3 batters into the inning without an out.

Further, with the M's already down 2 starting pitchers, there is NO REASON to risk injuring a 3rd one unnecessarily. 

12

But figured it was more fun to make things up. 

It is also used as:

Middlesex University Teaching Resources

14

...we're also legitimately close to 3 of those guys (Barely-Out Kuma, Felix, and Paxton) being back to speed. So there's that.

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