As long as its instant and dependable, I would be too. What I don't want is a pitcher having to wait 5 minutes in a 2-1 count to find out whether that last pitch was a strike, because it's being reviewed in the booth. If you think players bitch about balls and strikes now, imagine how they would act if they could actually change calls. It would be impossible to get them to leave the batter's box.
I watched the game and they weren't entirely his fault. For some reason the pitcher's mound was absolutely falling apart the last inning or so he pitched and it was messing with his control. They had to call the grounds crew in to build the mound back up again.
Thanks to the Mariners, I now have more emotional issues than a room full of strippers. To give you an idea of what it's like to be a fan, the Mariners have lost 13 1 run games this season. If the Mariners win those games, they go from 24-41 and trading Cliff Lee for prospects in a month to 37-28 and battling Texas of all fucking teams for the division race. My hypothesis for this shitshow of a season is that Seattle had an assload of one run games go for them last year. Which inflated expectations. Which made this year suck worse than most. This year is simply regression to the mean. Now that I've got the bitching out of my system, I'm doing my best Cubs fan impression and looking forward to next year. Clearly, Cliff isn't sticking around. Who are they getting for him?
The slump the Phillies are in is mindblowing. Chase Utley batting 260? WTF?? That has nothing to do with Rollins being out either, not that bad. Zyron, I'm not sure who's ballpark is shorter but Texira's 314 foot HR tuesday night was pretty sad. Of course if it was any of my guys I would take it! Werth has at least four or five a year in right field at Citizens that wouldn't go out anywhere else.
Yeah, that was a cheap one but with the slump that Tex has been in, he needed it. I can't believe they are losing right now with 60 year old Jamie Moyer pitching. An 82 MPH fastball, fucking hit it.
He may have little in the way of velocity but the dude was hitting his spots and keeping hitters off balance all night. Goes to show you that even with little velocity, if you can paint corners with pitches that move around, you are going to pitch a great game.
Great weekend of baseball in Boston. The Sox are killing it in interleague play. Even better, the AL East is nice and tight with the Sox-Rays-Yankees all separated by a single game. Big strides especially with Ellsbury, Beckett, and Daisuke all injured. Where did Redbull run off to?
I'm a pretty big Pirates fan. I don't post here much because, well who would care? I just wanted to share our latest bit of misery. On Saturday the organization was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1960 World Series Championship over the Yankees. They brought in a bunch of the old players, and it was all quite nice. They were also giving away commemorative beer steins to the fans. Unfortunately they messed up the box scores printed on the steins, saying the Yankees won game 5 and therefore won the series. Welcome to our world.
I personally thought that it couldn't get any worse than you guys firing a Pierogi. What's next,,, the Brewers laying off the Chorizo sausage?
I hate the innings limit that the Yankees put on their young pitchers. Hughes is now being skipped his next start. This is his third year in the majors, there should be no more innings limits on him. Last year Joba Chamberlain had a 3 game run right after the all star break where he was 3-0 with an ERA around 1.00. The Yankees than sat him a start and put him on retarded limits and he hasn't been the same since. Just let them fucking pitch.
I'm sure Mark Prior and Kerry Wood would disagree with you. And all the other young pitchers that had great starts and fantastically flamed out. Sweet Lou is coming to Safeco this afternoon. In a perfect world, Lou gets a heartwarming reception, and proceeds to throw the series and gives Seattle a nice win streak. I can't believe how delusional I am.
Nolan Ryan wouldn't. I think in many cases the ridiculous "standard" they're limiting pitchers to actually hurts the pitcher. Everyone's body type, pitching motion, and durability are different. If a pitcher feels fine... let them fucking pitch. I can't wait to see who's buying-selling-standing pat before the trade deadline. Especially with the AL East being essentially all tied up it'll be interesting to see if the Sox-Yanks-Rays make some moves.
Do you honestly believe a young pitcher is going to tell his manager that "No, I can't do it today"? I find it kind of hard to believe that in a locker room full of guys competing to take your spot in the rotation, you wouldn't lie to keep your job.
Do you honestly believe a guy like Hughes would lose his place if he asked for a night off? Nobody knows these guys bodies better than themselves.
When Ryan was 19, he pitched 205 innings in A, AA and the majors. His inning totals for the next five years: 7, 134, 89.1, 131.2, 152. Yeah, high pitch counts totally worked for young Ryan.
Here's a recent article in Sports Illustrated that looks at how Nolan Ryan and his pitching coach Mike Maddux are trying to buck the trend of pitch counts. "You're always going to have people against you, and anytime you do something different, you're going to be criticized," says Ryan. "I know there are people out there waiting for one of our guys to come down with an arm injury and throw everything back at our face. But I know what we're doing here is the right thing."
The supervision of A & AA ball is completely different than that of the major leagues... especially when Ryan was pitching in the minors. Also there's a difference between the strength and conditioning that a high school/college ball player undergoes prior to the minors (where they should be limited) and that of a major leaguer that has been up for a number of years. If a player is feeling tight, sore, "injured" then they should absolutely speak up. Also if they're feeling fine after throwing 100 pitches and are in a groove they should be left in the game and left in their normal rotation. With all the medical resources available to MLB teams nowadays it seems silly to have an arbitrary number for pitches and innings for a season.
No, I wouldn't. But I think New York is making it easier on both Hughes and their coaches by not making it a choice they'd have to make. As of today, Phil Hughes has never pitched more than 86 innings in a season. To go from 86 innings and stretch him to 175-200 seems like an unnecessary risk to me. Especially since he's been pitching as well as he has. New York is doing the right thing by breaking him in slowly and not jeopardizing the time and money they've invested into him.