MLB 2012

Off Topic
121

[quote]Gettnitdone wrote:
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say Darvish > Strasburg.

Who disagrees?[/quote]

As long as Strasburg is healthy, I respectfully disagree. Strasburg has better stuff.

There seems to be this trend in Japan where their pitchers all do twelve different things with the ball and they can throw it all for strikes. And then you find out when they get here that in Japan they consider the sinker, cutter and four-seam fastball three different pitches when it’s really just three different things you’re doing with one pitch (the fastball). And of course, if they know how to change speeds with their breaking ball, like ALL above average pitchers in the majors, then they count that as three or four different pitches. That whole gyro ball bullshit with Matsuzaka a few years ago was a joke. The gyro ball was nothing more than a flat, back-up slider that he basically ditched after about five starts.

Darvish has good stuff, but from what I’ve seen he’s overhyped. He has a good fastball and he knows how to sink and cut it, but it isn’t the 98mph fastball that we heard about so much before he got here. He looks more like he’s around 92-94, which is still good but it’s not what Strasburg features with his fastball.

At this stage of the game I’d say Strasburg has better command of the strike zone, especially with his fastball. His changeup is probably better than any offspeed pitch Darvish has to offer as well. But I still don’t like Strasburg’s mechanics, so until he pitches a 200-inning season with considerable success I’m going to remain skeptical about his future.

122

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

However, I also think this spells the end of Lincecum in SF. They’re paying him something like $15-17 million a year through 2013, then he’s an unrestricted free agent. If he starts to taper off sharply, which it looks like he’s in the middle of doing, they could sign him relatively cheap, but if he’s on the decline why even bother? I think this is a sign that the Giants have decided which of their pitchers are the best long-term prospects and they’ve gone ahead and locked them up. I think they’re right too: Bumgarner is 6’5" 235 and has never missed a start in his professional career. Matt Cain is 6’3" 215 and has also never missed a start. These guys are built for the long haul and Lincecum simply isn’t.

And I think the Giants management is probably pretty frustrated with Lincecum. He doesn’t work out hard or seem to have any idea as to how to train in the off season. His weight is constantly fluctuating and the fact is that he’s lost velocity on AND command of his fastball every year the last 2 or 3 years now. I can’t believe I wasted a fucking third round pick on him in my fantasy league. It was a momentary pang of nostalgia.[/quote]

Although he’s provided elite pitching, he’s technically been in decline since his 2nd Cy Young year. The decrease in his strikeout rate and increase in walk rate are usually telling signs . The guy has been absolutely abused the last 4 years, he’s always among the league leaders in pitches thrown/start and total IP. Add in his velocity issues, the unconventional arm taxing delivery and his decision to drop his slider to save his arm and what you’re left with is a risky investment.

I think the Giants have gotten most of Lincecum’s even though technically a player’s prime is generally 26-32.

[/quote]

I don’t think his windup has anything to do with his velocity drop as far as arm strength goes. I think what it has done it has prevented him from finding a very repeatable motion and his control has suffered as a result. With loss of control and the ever-present strikeout mode he seems to be in from the first pitch of an at-bat to the last, he ended up running up high pitch totals even when he was throwing well. I think the high pitch counts and his slight frame, combined with a seeming indifference towards off season conditioning, have eroded his fastball considerably.
[/quote]

I remember discussing his delivery last year, he has that inverted L in his arm action which can be troublesome. I didn’t realize his control hadn’t really improved since he stepped into the league though.

123

Lincecums fastball didn’t break 92 last night. Wow

124

So if you guys recall Evan Longoria a former elite prospect was signed to a 9 year deal his 2nd week in the Majors.

With what we’ve seen from Brandon Jennings and Bret Lawrie, do you think it makes sense locking them up this early in their careers?

125

http://sports.yahoo.com/video/player/feat/MLB_Highlights/28975009#feat/MLB_Highlights/28975009

126

[quote]therajraj wrote:
http://sports.yahoo.com/video/player/feat/MLB_Highlights/28975009#feat/MLB_Highlights/28975009[/quote]

That was an incredible throw. The best part is that not only did he rifle the fucking thing in there for a perfect strike from about 300’, he got rid of it really quickly.

The fact that Ankiel has been able to make such a successful transition to the OF is an awesome story. I remember watching that playoff game where he threw something like 35 wild pitches in 4+ innings, all of them at 96mph or higher. His downfall was so rapid and so outlandish that I thought he was destined to go the way of Donnie Moore or something like that.

When he hit 2 homeruns in his first game in the bigs since that meltdown, and then hit another the next day (or was it the other way around?) I was really happy for him. It’s stories like his that make baseball, and sports in general, so special.

127

In other news, Ozzie Guillen is back at the helm for the Marlins. What do you guys think of Guillen as a manager? Personally, if I was a GM or an owner I wouldn’t want anything to do with him. The whole thing with the Castro comments didn’t really surprise me in all honesty. The guy is a major distraction waiting to happen. We haven’t even seen any bizarre tweets from his kid yet and he’s already in the middle of a major controversy. I can’t imagine his players enjoy playing for a manager who brings so much attention on himself and the team.

Shit, for what it’s worth I wasn’t really crazy about the Valentine hiring in Boston either. The team clearly had some discipline issues last year that went beyond the whole beer-drinking thing. A guy like Valentine seems like he’s more likely to alienate the players in need of an attitude adjustment than straighten them out. Fuck, half the players on the team didn’t even think there was a problem in the clubhouse last year; they just played poorly at the wrong time of the year and things snowballed on them. That shit happens. So I can see how those players would be quick to be resentful toward Valentine from Day One if he’s brought in at least in part to straighten out a problem that they don’t even think ever existed to begin with.

And then he pops off and says some stupid shit about Youkilis in public to a fucking sportswriter of all people (they’re the scum of the Earth) instead of to his face behind closed doors and you have the beginnings of a serious problem in Boston. Bad hire. I don’t think Epstein would have hired him, that’s for sure.

128

When it comes to managers, they’re ability to positively effect a team is grossly overestimated while they’re ability to negatively effect a team is accurately represented, in my opinion.

If you’re personable, know how to manage people/personalities, keep issues behind closed doors and make the most obvious and logical decisions on the field, you’re going to succeed as much as you possibly can. Either the players have talent and a strong work ethic to go far or they don’t. Managers can’t change that.

On the other side of the coin, if you call your players out in public, create an unpleasant locker room environment and manage games mostly with your “gut” then you’re asking for trouble.

Just look at the 2011 post season. You can tell from his interviews, Ron Washington is a personable guy. However, when I watched him manage baseball games, it was clear the guy managed by what “felt” right to him instead of going by the book. I would go as far as saying his managing cost the 2011 Rangers the World Series.

So to answer your question, no I don’t like Guillen or Valentine.

129

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
In other news, Ozzie Guillen is back at the helm for the Marlins. What do you guys think of Guillen as a manager? Personally, if I was a GM or an owner I wouldn’t want anything to do with him. The whole thing with the Castro comments didn’t really surprise me in all honesty. The guy is a major distraction waiting to happen. We haven’t even seen any bizarre tweets from his kid yet and he’s already in the middle of a major controversy. I can’t imagine his players enjoy playing for a manager who brings so much attention on himself and the team.

Shit, for what it’s worth I wasn’t really crazy about the Valentine hiring in Boston either. The team clearly had some discipline issues last year that went beyond the whole beer-drinking thing. A guy like Valentine seems like he’s more likely to alienate the players in need of an attitude adjustment than straighten them out. Fuck, half the players on the team didn’t even think there was a problem in the clubhouse last year; they just played poorly at the wrong time of the year and things snowballed on them. That shit happens. So I can see how those players would be quick to be resentful toward Valentine from Day One if he’s brought in at least in part to straighten out a problem that they don’t even think ever existed to begin with.

And then he pops off and says some stupid shit about Youkilis in public to a fucking sportswriter of all people (they’re the scum of the Earth) instead of to his face behind closed doors and you have the beginnings of a serious problem in Boston. Bad hire. I don’t think Epstein would have hired him, that’s for sure.[/quote]

I have never liked him, I always perceived him to be an asshole. I don’t think I’d like to play for him.
I have do reservations about suspending a guy for what he says unrelated to baseball or the people you work for, but in a practical sense, if they didn’t suspend him, the anger of the city would have boiled over. When it comes to Fidel the Cubans don’t tend to be very forgiving.

I mean you have to 10 tons of dumbass to say you like Fidel Castro anywhere near Miami. Most of the people who live there are there because of the tyrannical maniac and many of the people in Miami know someone or have a member of the family who was killed by said tyrannical maniac. I mean seriously. How dumb can you be.
Word to the wise, if you like Fidel, don’t say so in Miami. It’s not good for your health.

130

By the way tried chewing tobacco for the first time today. I felt like Tony Gwynn minus the hitting ability… and the mouth cancer.

131

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
^^ That and Zito is out pitching Lincecum.
[/quote]
That won’t last. I think Zito finally took my advise and fired his extremely stupid PT. He got this new “guru” PT when he went to SF. This guy was the biggest nimrod I have ever seen. Zito’s issue had nothing to do with mechanics, pitch selection, location or anything else. Very simply by the time he got on the mound, he was totally wore out. This guy’s “warm up” for game day was like a full training session, especially with his pitching arm. By the time he got to the mound, he was done. I have never seen that much volume called a ‘warm up’ That’s why Zito went into the toilet. Somebody must have told him and he fired the num-nut.

But Lincecum is waaaaay better by default. It’s still April.

They’ll get it turned around. To good not to hit.

That’s just how Joe Madden likes it. He’s got everybody right where they want them.

I figured it was going to take him a couple of months to get going. Big adjustment.

[quote]
Tigers offense going nuts[/quote]
They’re a good team.[/quote]

The problem with Zito has nothing to do with his pregame routine. Pitchers routinely throw 100+ pitches in the bullpen before they take the mound on the field.

The problem with him is his arm speed is waaaaaaay down from his All-Star days with the A’s. His fastball sits at about 84-85 on a good day, which is good enough to get major league hitters out if you have pinpoint control and good offspeed stuff. But Zito’s curveball is much less sharp because he can’t spin it out of his hand as hard anymore. It’s also flattened and his other offspeed offerings have never been that great. To compound things, he doesn’t have good command and regularly misses his spots by throwing the pitch toward the middle of the plate and up rather than down and off the plate.

The bottom line is that when you take an 84 mph fastball into the game and you consistently miss up in the strike zone you’re fucked no matter what your pregame routine is. It’s a miracle the guy has pitched well thus far. Hiring that over-analytical dipshit Tom House was a mistake too. He makes some drastic change to his delivery every off season in the hopes of gaining velocity, but a lack of velocity isn’t his problem at all; it’s a lack of command with ALL of his pitches.

If a pitcher can effectively change speeds with all of his pitches for consistent strikes at the down-and-away location and they can regularly spot the fastball at the belt just off the plate inside, they can dominate any lineup with any type of fastball velocity, certainly with an 85 mph fastball. But Zito has NEVER shown the ability to do that for more than a couple of starts at a time at best since he’s been with the Giants. I doubt he’s suddenly figured it out.[/quote]

You must not have seen his pregame ritual in the heart of that mess? They did some special on it on ESPN when he was first traded. It really was insane.
I really do think he was totally fatigued before he hit the mound… Do a bone crushing arm and shoulder work out and then try to throw hard for strikes. They’ll look like his. He was doing like 100 rep shoulder raises with bands and shit like that; front, side and rear.

It may have been something else, I really don’t know, but the time correlates with when he started working with that guy and doing those nutty warm ups.

132

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
In other news, Ozzie Guillen is back at the helm for the Marlins. What do you guys think of Guillen as a manager? Personally, if I was a GM or an owner I wouldn’t want anything to do with him. The whole thing with the Castro comments didn’t really surprise me in all honesty. The guy is a major distraction waiting to happen. We haven’t even seen any bizarre tweets from his kid yet and he’s already in the middle of a major controversy. I can’t imagine his players enjoy playing for a manager who brings so much attention on himself and the team.

Shit, for what it’s worth I wasn’t really crazy about the Valentine hiring in Boston either. The team clearly had some discipline issues last year that went beyond the whole beer-drinking thing. A guy like Valentine seems like he’s more likely to alienate the players in need of an attitude adjustment than straighten them out. Fuck, half the players on the team didn’t even think there was a problem in the clubhouse last year; they just played poorly at the wrong time of the year and things snowballed on them. That shit happens. So I can see how those players would be quick to be resentful toward Valentine from Day One if he’s brought in at least in part to straighten out a problem that they don’t even think ever existed to begin with.

And then he pops off and says some stupid shit about Youkilis in public to a fucking sportswriter of all people (they’re the scum of the Earth) instead of to his face behind closed doors and you have the beginnings of a serious problem in Boston. Bad hire. I don’t think Epstein would have hired him, that’s for sure.[/quote]

Had to watch Ozzie manage for many years in a white sox uniform, always thought he was the king of idiots. I was elated when they canned his ass.

133

Holy shit. Did anyone here just catch one of the best regular season pitching duels in recent memory? Matt Cain jut dominated the Phillies for 9 innings and 0 runs on 2 hits. Except that Cliff Lee fucking matched him, zero for zero, through TEN innings. Giants won it with a walk-off hit from Melky Cabrera in the 11th.

Cain and Lee both looked unhittable. Cain’s last outing he gave up a one-out single in the 6th to the pitcher and didn’t allow a baserunner the entire game aside from that one. Then he follows it up by blanking the Phils with Lee matching him the whole way.

Cain is a fucking monster. The guy knows how to pitch, he has excellent command, he has sharp movement and/or good velocity and arm action on all of his pitches, he’s as mentally-tough as anyone I’ve ever seen pitch, his postseason ERA is zero, and he gets better and more refined each year. This year looks like he’s really sharpened up the fastball command down in the zone. He looks like he’s getting a little more movement on his two-seamer as well, and this has enhanced not only his changeup, but also the four-seamer that he’s been able to plant right under the hands with two strikes since his first major league start. I’d say he’ll easily finish the year as one of the top ten pitchers in the game, maybe even top four or five. Halladay and Verlander are hard to beat, but other than that I like Matt Cain just as much as Kershaw or Lee or Felix, and I certainly like him more than Hamels, Greinke, Sabathia, Lincecum, Lester, Price, Shields, CJ Wilson, Haren, Weaver or Strasburg.

134

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
^^ That and Zito is out pitching Lincecum.
[/quote]
That won’t last. I think Zito finally took my advise and fired his extremely stupid PT. He got this new “guru” PT when he went to SF. This guy was the biggest nimrod I have ever seen. Zito’s issue had nothing to do with mechanics, pitch selection, location or anything else. Very simply by the time he got on the mound, he was totally wore out. This guy’s “warm up” for game day was like a full training session, especially with his pitching arm. By the time he got to the mound, he was done. I have never seen that much volume called a ‘warm up’ That’s why Zito went into the toilet. Somebody must have told him and he fired the num-nut.

But Lincecum is waaaaay better by default. It’s still April.

They’ll get it turned around. To good not to hit.

That’s just how Joe Madden likes it. He’s got everybody right where they want them.

I figured it was going to take him a couple of months to get going. Big adjustment.

[quote]
Tigers offense going nuts[/quote]
They’re a good team.[/quote]

The problem with Zito has nothing to do with his pregame routine. Pitchers routinely throw 100+ pitches in the bullpen before they take the mound on the field.

The problem with him is his arm speed is waaaaaaay down from his All-Star days with the A’s. His fastball sits at about 84-85 on a good day, which is good enough to get major league hitters out if you have pinpoint control and good offspeed stuff. But Zito’s curveball is much less sharp because he can’t spin it out of his hand as hard anymore. It’s also flattened and his other offspeed offerings have never been that great. To compound things, he doesn’t have good command and regularly misses his spots by throwing the pitch toward the middle of the plate and up rather than down and off the plate.

The bottom line is that when you take an 84 mph fastball into the game and you consistently miss up in the strike zone you’re fucked no matter what your pregame routine is. It’s a miracle the guy has pitched well thus far. Hiring that over-analytical dipshit Tom House was a mistake too. He makes some drastic change to his delivery every off season in the hopes of gaining velocity, but a lack of velocity isn’t his problem at all; it’s a lack of command with ALL of his pitches.

If a pitcher can effectively change speeds with all of his pitches for consistent strikes at the down-and-away location and they can regularly spot the fastball at the belt just off the plate inside, they can dominate any lineup with any type of fastball velocity, certainly with an 85 mph fastball. But Zito has NEVER shown the ability to do that for more than a couple of starts at a time at best since he’s been with the Giants. I doubt he’s suddenly figured it out.[/quote]

You must not have seen his pregame ritual in the heart of that mess? They did some special on it on ESPN when he was first traded. It really was insane.
I really do think he was totally fatigued before he hit the mound… Do a bone crushing arm and shoulder work out and then try to throw hard for strikes. They’ll look like his. He was doing like 100 rep shoulder raises with bands and shit like that; front, side and rear.

It may have been something else, I really don’t know, but the time correlates with when he started working with that guy and doing those nutty warm ups.[/quote]

Zito wasn’t traded to the Giants; he signed with them as an unrestricted free agent.

I was aware of his pregame routine when he first came over to the Giants, but I’m pretty sure he abandoned that program after his first year. He changes his whole approach every year. After his first year he allegedly did a lot more work on his “core”, in order to increase velocity. I guess the year before that he focused on a lot of resistance work for his shoulder. He did the whole “core” thing for a couple years but he still fucking sucked cock so then he tried to change his delivery into a sort of old-school Sandy Koufax motion where he really rocked back, arms went up and behind the head and he really tried to generate a lot of momentum toward the plate this way, along with a more pronounced drop and drive with his back leg. That was shit-canned about two starts into Spring Training, his mechanics never really recovered that year and he was left off the postseason roster.

I’d be shocked if he was still doing that much work for his rotator cuff before starts simply because he doesn’t seem to stick to any one approach for very long. All of the myriad changes he’s made over the years have always been an attempt at gaining more velocity, which he hasn’t done at all. So he’s had to change every year searching for the magical routine that will put 3-4 mph on his fastball.

This year he worked out with Tom House in the offseason and came into Spring Training with a new delivery where he threw out of a very pronounced crouch when he was in the stretch to somehow generate more drive with his leg and supposedly put a couple mph on his pitches. They shit-canned that motion about two starts into the Spring, just like the last time he made some bullshit change.

And I’m familiar with Tom House and his methods. I own a couple of his books and while they do call for a large volume of work for the rotator cuff, elbow flexor and forearm, it’s not supposed to be applied during the season. The offseason program is intensive but the in-season program is more for maintenance and it certainly doesn’t call for that heavy a workload the day he starts. So I doubt that he would have Zito doing this prior to the season and I doubt Zito would choose to go back to a failed routine that’s more intensive than what he was doing before once the season has started.

Just my own hypothesis, of course. I don’t go to the ballpark early enough to see that early into the pitchers’ pregame routines, and if I do I’m in the bleachers for batting practice. And I definitely try to avoid the entire city of SF on the days that Zito’s turn in the rotation comes around. So I really don’t know shit about what he’s done to prepare himself for games over the years.

135

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
^^ That and Zito is out pitching Lincecum.
[/quote]
That won’t last. I think Zito finally took my advise and fired his extremely stupid PT. He got this new “guru” PT when he went to SF. This guy was the biggest nimrod I have ever seen. Zito’s issue had nothing to do with mechanics, pitch selection, location or anything else. Very simply by the time he got on the mound, he was totally wore out. This guy’s “warm up” for game day was like a full training session, especially with his pitching arm. By the time he got to the mound, he was done. I have never seen that much volume called a ‘warm up’ That’s why Zito went into the toilet. Somebody must have told him and he fired the num-nut.

But Lincecum is waaaaay better by default. It’s still April.

They’ll get it turned around. To good not to hit.

That’s just how Joe Madden likes it. He’s got everybody right where they want them.

I figured it was going to take him a couple of months to get going. Big adjustment.

[quote]
Tigers offense going nuts[/quote]
They’re a good team.[/quote]

The problem with Zito has nothing to do with his pregame routine. Pitchers routinely throw 100+ pitches in the bullpen before they take the mound on the field.

The problem with him is his arm speed is waaaaaaay down from his All-Star days with the A’s. His fastball sits at about 84-85 on a good day, which is good enough to get major league hitters out if you have pinpoint control and good offspeed stuff. But Zito’s curveball is much less sharp because he can’t spin it out of his hand as hard anymore. It’s also flattened and his other offspeed offerings have never been that great. To compound things, he doesn’t have good command and regularly misses his spots by throwing the pitch toward the middle of the plate and up rather than down and off the plate.

The bottom line is that when you take an 84 mph fastball into the game and you consistently miss up in the strike zone you’re fucked no matter what your pregame routine is. It’s a miracle the guy has pitched well thus far. Hiring that over-analytical dipshit Tom House was a mistake too. He makes some drastic change to his delivery every off season in the hopes of gaining velocity, but a lack of velocity isn’t his problem at all; it’s a lack of command with ALL of his pitches.

If a pitcher can effectively change speeds with all of his pitches for consistent strikes at the down-and-away location and they can regularly spot the fastball at the belt just off the plate inside, they can dominate any lineup with any type of fastball velocity, certainly with an 85 mph fastball. But Zito has NEVER shown the ability to do that for more than a couple of starts at a time at best since he’s been with the Giants. I doubt he’s suddenly figured it out.[/quote]

You must not have seen his pregame ritual in the heart of that mess? They did some special on it on ESPN when he was first traded. It really was insane.
I really do think he was totally fatigued before he hit the mound… Do a bone crushing arm and shoulder work out and then try to throw hard for strikes. They’ll look like his. He was doing like 100 rep shoulder raises with bands and shit like that; front, side and rear.

It may have been something else, I really don’t know, but the time correlates with when he started working with that guy and doing those nutty warm ups.[/quote]

Also, Zito had been on the decline since well before he got to SF, which makes the correlation invalid. Things really went downhill fast his first year in SF because of his natural regression and the fact that he’s a fucking mental midget and just went into a funk when he started off shitty.

Zito lost velocity on his fastball, and it may have happened right around the time he hired this guy, but he’d never really had great command of the down-and-away location with his fastball at any point in his career. Every pitcher loses 2-3 mph like he did once they’ve had 2 or 3 straight years of 35, 36 starts and 200+ innings, like Zito. But good pitchers learn how to compensate for that drop in velocity with better control of all of their pitches. Much like Lincecum right now, Zito has failed to gain control as his velocity has dropped. That is a bad combination for any pitcher and I would avoid signing a pitcher displaying this characteristic regardless of who his trainer was.

The point is that this decline would have happened no matter who his trainer was and if he was gassing him that much before starts he would have been throwing even slower back then because he was already in the middle of losing velocity anyways. He hasn’t adjusted and so he gets shellacked about 20 out of every 32 starts. Every now and then (about twice a year) he actually does carry a good fastball into the game (for him, 87-88mph at the absolute most) and he does well, and every now and then he just runs into some dogshit team in the middle of a ten-game roadtrip during the third week of August and he shuts them down to the tune of 7 or 8 innings and 1 run even though he’s throwing complete fucking slop up there half the time.

136

Lee throws 10 shutout innings and the Phils still lose. Pretty obvious where their major weakness is and it sure aint pitching.

137

Even if they had Utley and Howard they would be in major trouble.

I think they’ll still win the division but will go away quietly in the postseason

138

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]therajraj wrote:
^^ That and Zito is out pitching Lincecum.
[/quote]
That won’t last. I think Zito finally took my advise and fired his extremely stupid PT. He got this new “guru” PT when he went to SF. This guy was the biggest nimrod I have ever seen. Zito’s issue had nothing to do with mechanics, pitch selection, location or anything else. Very simply by the time he got on the mound, he was totally wore out. This guy’s “warm up” for game day was like a full training session, especially with his pitching arm. By the time he got to the mound, he was done. I have never seen that much volume called a ‘warm up’ That’s why Zito went into the toilet. Somebody must have told him and he fired the num-nut.

But Lincecum is waaaaay better by default. It’s still April.

They’ll get it turned around. To good not to hit.

That’s just how Joe Madden likes it. He’s got everybody right where they want them.

I figured it was going to take him a couple of months to get going. Big adjustment.

[quote]
Tigers offense going nuts[/quote]
They’re a good team.[/quote]

The problem with Zito has nothing to do with his pregame routine. Pitchers routinely throw 100+ pitches in the bullpen before they take the mound on the field.

The problem with him is his arm speed is waaaaaaay down from his All-Star days with the A’s. His fastball sits at about 84-85 on a good day, which is good enough to get major league hitters out if you have pinpoint control and good offspeed stuff. But Zito’s curveball is much less sharp because he can’t spin it out of his hand as hard anymore. It’s also flattened and his other offspeed offerings have never been that great. To compound things, he doesn’t have good command and regularly misses his spots by throwing the pitch toward the middle of the plate and up rather than down and off the plate.

The bottom line is that when you take an 84 mph fastball into the game and you consistently miss up in the strike zone you’re fucked no matter what your pregame routine is. It’s a miracle the guy has pitched well thus far. Hiring that over-analytical dipshit Tom House was a mistake too. He makes some drastic change to his delivery every off season in the hopes of gaining velocity, but a lack of velocity isn’t his problem at all; it’s a lack of command with ALL of his pitches.

If a pitcher can effectively change speeds with all of his pitches for consistent strikes at the down-and-away location and they can regularly spot the fastball at the belt just off the plate inside, they can dominate any lineup with any type of fastball velocity, certainly with an 85 mph fastball. But Zito has NEVER shown the ability to do that for more than a couple of starts at a time at best since he’s been with the Giants. I doubt he’s suddenly figured it out.[/quote]

You must not have seen his pregame ritual in the heart of that mess? They did some special on it on ESPN when he was first traded. It really was insane.
I really do think he was totally fatigued before he hit the mound… Do a bone crushing arm and shoulder work out and then try to throw hard for strikes. They’ll look like his. He was doing like 100 rep shoulder raises with bands and shit like that; front, side and rear.

It may have been something else, I really don’t know, but the time correlates with when he started working with that guy and doing those nutty warm ups.[/quote]

Zito wasn’t traded to the Giants; he signed with them as an unrestricted free agent.

I was aware of his pregame routine when he first came over to the Giants, but I’m pretty sure he abandoned that program after his first year. He changes his whole approach every year. After his first year he allegedly did a lot more work on his “core”, in order to increase velocity. I guess the year before that he focused on a lot of resistance work for his shoulder. He did the whole “core” thing for a couple years but he still fucking sucked cock so then he tried to change his delivery into a sort of old-school Sandy Koufax motion where he really rocked back, arms went up and behind the head and he really tried to generate a lot of momentum toward the plate this way, along with a more pronounced drop and drive with his back leg. That was shit-canned about two starts into Spring Training, his mechanics never really recovered that year and he was left off the postseason roster.

I’d be shocked if he was still doing that much work for his rotator cuff before starts simply because he doesn’t seem to stick to any one approach for very long. All of the myriad changes he’s made over the years have always been an attempt at gaining more velocity, which he hasn’t done at all. So he’s had to change every year searching for the magical routine that will put 3-4 mph on his fastball.

This year he worked out with Tom House in the offseason and came into Spring Training with a new delivery where he threw out of a very pronounced crouch when he was in the stretch to somehow generate more drive with his leg and supposedly put a couple mph on his pitches. They shit-canned that motion about two starts into the Spring, just like the last time he made some bullshit change.

And I’m familiar with Tom House and his methods. I own a couple of his books and while they do call for a large volume of work for the rotator cuff, elbow flexor and forearm, it’s not supposed to be applied during the season. The offseason program is intensive but the in-season program is more for maintenance and it certainly doesn’t call for that heavy a workload the day he starts. So I doubt that he would have Zito doing this prior to the season and I doubt Zito would choose to go back to a failed routine that’s more intensive than what he was doing before once the season has started.

Just my own hypothesis, of course. I don’t go to the ballpark early enough to see that early into the pitchers’ pregame routines, and if I do I’m in the bleachers for batting practice. And I definitely try to avoid the entire city of SF on the days that Zito’s turn in the rotation comes around. So I really don’t know shit about what he’s done to prepare himself for games over the years.[/quote]

You’re right of course. I am only basing my opinions on what I saw. When I saw him doing it, right away I thought that there is no way you can do that much volume on your rotator cuff and delts and not totally exhaust them, pregame. But if he switches routines like you say, then if it was a factor, it’s wasn’t one very long.

I don’t actually know. I just know that he was on the decline, and I saw that and pretty much concluded the ‘he’s too exhausted to pitch’ theory. But I haven’t followed him that close.
I was elated when the Braves signed Hudson and I wanted Zito also, badly. Then I saw him in SF, and I was really happy we did not get them…

There’s a reason I am not a scout I reckon.

139

[quote]Anonymity wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
In other news, Ozzie Guillen is back at the helm for the Marlins. What do you guys think of Guillen as a manager? Personally, if I was a GM or an owner I wouldn’t want anything to do with him. The whole thing with the Castro comments didn’t really surprise me in all honesty. The guy is a major distraction waiting to happen. We haven’t even seen any bizarre tweets from his kid yet and he’s already in the middle of a major controversy. I can’t imagine his players enjoy playing for a manager who brings so much attention on himself and the team.

Shit, for what it’s worth I wasn’t really crazy about the Valentine hiring in Boston either. The team clearly had some discipline issues last year that went beyond the whole beer-drinking thing. A guy like Valentine seems like he’s more likely to alienate the players in need of an attitude adjustment than straighten them out. Fuck, half the players on the team didn’t even think there was a problem in the clubhouse last year; they just played poorly at the wrong time of the year and things snowballed on them. That shit happens. So I can see how those players would be quick to be resentful toward Valentine from Day One if he’s brought in at least in part to straighten out a problem that they don’t even think ever existed to begin with.

And then he pops off and says some stupid shit about Youkilis in public to a fucking sportswriter of all people (they’re the scum of the Earth) instead of to his face behind closed doors and you have the beginnings of a serious problem in Boston. Bad hire. I don’t think Epstein would have hired him, that’s for sure.[/quote]

Had to watch Ozzie manage for many years in a white sox uniform, always thought he was the king of idiots. I was elated when they canned his ass.[/quote]

But I just don’t see why Chicagoans(?) don’t rally around the WS like they do the Cubs? I guess I’d have to live there to understand, but the WS are consistently better, and have way lower attendance…
Of course I am one to talk, I live in ATL and our attendance sucks too, however the reason for that is rooted in the lay out of the city and woeful transportation issues. Plain and simple, for us, if it were easier to get there, we’d go a hell of a lot more.

I mean, this town is football crazy. I mean it’s nuts, and we still don’t sell out football games and we have a winning team.

140

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Holy shit. Did anyone here just catch one of the best regular season pitching duels in recent memory? Matt Cain jut dominated the Phillies for 9 innings and 0 runs on 2 hits. Except that Cliff Lee fucking matched him, zero for zero, through TEN innings. Giants won it with a walk-off hit from Melky Cabrera in the 11th.

Cain and Lee both looked unhittable. Cain’s last outing he gave up a one-out single in the 6th to the pitcher and didn’t allow a baserunner the entire game aside from that one. Then he follows it up by blanking the Phils with Lee matching him the whole way.

Cain is a fucking monster. The guy knows how to pitch, he has excellent command, he has sharp movement and/or good velocity and arm action on all of his pitches, he’s as mentally-tough as anyone I’ve ever seen pitch, his postseason ERA is zero, and he gets better and more refined each year. This year looks like he’s really sharpened up the fastball command down in the zone. He looks like he’s getting a little more movement on his two-seamer as well, and this has enhanced not only his changeup, but also the four-seamer that he’s been able to plant right under the hands with two strikes since his first major league start. I’d say he’ll easily finish the year as one of the top ten pitchers in the game, maybe even top four or five. Halladay and Verlander are hard to beat, but other than that I like Matt Cain just as much as Kershaw or Lee or Felix, and I certainly like him more than Hamels, Greinke, Sabathia, Lincecum, Lester, Price, Shields, CJ Wilson, Haren, Weaver or Strasburg.[/quote]

And we thank you for that. Every Phillies loss is important. They are going to get healthy soon so folks need to beat them down while we can. Those games are going to matter come Sept.