| By Chris Crawford |  | By 08-29-2010 |
Is it time for the Arizona Fall League yet? This season has helped re-define the phrase 'Dog Days of Summer'. Thank goodness for Felix and.... -- lemme get back to you on that.
The Good
Brandon League still isn't missing bats the way a pitcher with his ability should, but his second-half has proven to be much more successful then his first -- posting a 0.42 ERA and cutting his walks in half. Using ERA as a judge for a relief pitcher is stupid -- I know, but the lack of walks show he's been able to command his fastball and throw his secondary stuff -- which has lead to the lowest line-drive percentage of his career and has increased his ground-ball percentage by eight percent over 2009. If League shows more confidence in his sinker and becomes less obvious with his patterns, the right-hander could become a dominating reliever -- which would increase his trade value emphatically.
In Clinton -- James Jones got off to a very poor start, but the young lefty from Long Island has been gangbusters since the All-Star Break. Jones has increased his OPS by over .200 points in the second-half, including nearly a seventy point increase in on-base percentage (.319 to .387). There's a very large chance Jones is nothing more than 4th outfielder, but his second half is reason enough for optimism.
The Bad
Remember the solid numbers Josh Wilson was putting up in the early months? Me either. Wilson's OPS is now below the .650 mark, and the infielder hasn't even come close to that lately (.441 in July, .534 in August). It's not like Wilson is making it up with his glove either, he's 35th among shortstops in UZR. He's been worth a half a win over a replacement player -- but a lot of that is based on his April. Don't let your Grandma tell you Josh Wilson should play more, he shouldn't really play at all.
I wrote about Blake Beavan having a nice start when I was in Tacoma, and there was some reason to be excited about the young Texan. Unfortunately, outside of that start Beavan has been over-matched. The twenty-one year old righty has given up thirty seven hits in his thirty one innings, and has only struck out fourteen in that same time frame. There's a lot of time for Beavan to figure things out -- but I'd be stunned if he contributes at all in 2011, which is sort of disappointing.
The Ugly
Maybe it's unfair to call this ugly -- instead we'll call this 'The Almost Ugly'.
The M's absolutely made the right decision to shut Michael Pineda down for the rest of the year -- but they didn't make the decision at the right time. It should have been at least two weeks sooner. Some may argue that he hadn't reached his career high in innings -- but those people would be missing the point. Not only are the innings Pineda has thrown this year infinitely more high-stress than the innings he was throwing when he was in Wisconsin, it's important to keep in mind that the right-hander threw only 47 innings last year. Going from 47 to 138 innings is a huge difference, especially on a twenty-one year old.
I'm glad the M's did the right thing and stopped Pineda's workload. But the decision should have been made in early August -- not a few days before the September call-ups.
gbu----august-29th,-2010
Comments
The following 11 comment(s) for this article are shown below:
| 1. By: fjpavia on 08-29-2010 21:14:07 The bad - 2nd paragraph - spelling excited as exited. |
| 2. By: mauricewilliamsiii on 08-29-2010 21:51:52 The Ugly - forcing Pineda to get to the 140 innings on 80-85 pitch counts. Talk about putting unneccessary pressure on the kid to perfect for him to have a chance to win games. Innings limits good. Pitch counts o.k. 80-85 pitch counts for a starter in July and August, height of stupidity. |
| 3. By: Jason A. Churchill on 08-29-2010 22:30:27 Not a spelling issue, fjp, it's just a missed typo. You wanna go chastise for typos, go elsewhere. Thank you, good day. |
| 4. By: 11records on 08-29-2010 23:21:54 Make that 48 hits in 35 innings on Beavan. Very prescient, Chris. |
| 5. By: Edman on 08-29-2010 23:57:07 I don't think there's anything stupid about pitch counts with Pineda. What's the hurry? Does he need to be in Seattle's rotation by next season? Let the kid get through the season healthy, then start to expand his innings and pitch counts, next year. He's too good a prospect to not take care in his handling. And so what if he were to have 100 pitch, pitch-counts in July and August? It just means you shut him down sooner. And, probably limit your ability to promote him to AAA, because he'd already be close to his total innings limit. I'd rather they take care and caution with him, especially in light of the Strasburg news. No need to overstress his arm this year. |
| 6. By: mauricewilliamsiii on 08-30-2010 00:13:15 Yes Edman, but what if the lower pitch counts are causing a psychological reaction in the pitchers that is less pitches means more max effort means more chance to make outs and get farther in the game. Both Tony Gwynn expressed this sentiment on the day the surgery was announced. Basically the theory goes that the pitcher knows how many pitches he has so to get the best results out of the limited pitches he goes max effort more often than if he had a more reasonable pitch count. Plus where do these numbers come from. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that throwing 100 pitches is more likely to cause damage than 85. Or in Strasburg's case that throwing 120 is more likely to cause damage than throwing 100. |
| 7. By: dawgncarolina on 08-30-2010 01:02:25 "Plus where do these numbers come from. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that throwing 100 pitches is more likely to cause damage than 85.Or in Strasburg's case that throwing 120 is more likely to cause damage than throwing 100." And there's no scientific evidence that it doesn't. And in the absence of evidence, you use common sense. And common sense says that the more pitches one throws, the more likely they are to get tired, and the more likely they are to get tired the more likely they are to let their mechanics slip, and the more likely they are to let their mechanics slip the more likely they are to jack something up. It's not really that hard. And if the Gwynn hypothesis was correct than we'd see relievers throwing out their arms more often than starters, which we do not even close to see. It's a ridiculous notion. |
| 8. By: dawgncarolina on 08-30-2010 02:27:07 And if your argument is that he's trying to get deep enough into the game to qualify for the win, then he would be more prone to pitch to contact than to overthrow for the strikeout (which takes more pitches), so again, it doesn't work. There's just way too many holes in your argument. |
| 9. By: mauricewilliamsiii on 08-30-2010 02:57:00 I'm saying that the pitcher knows he only has x amount of pitches which makes him less likely to waste pitches which means a higher percentage of the pitches he throws are going to be max effort. We have a team now that doesn't believe in strict pitch counts in the Rangers so I would say lets watch and see which teams have more injuries the coddlers like the M's and Nationals or the team that just trusts guys to know their own limits and just lets them throw. By the way they throw a lot more over in Japan and they seem to have less injuries. At least less high profile ones. |
| 10. By: fjpavia on 08-30-2010 08:11:57 Didn't mean to chastise - just used "the bad" to point out where it was. wanted to point out where it was. CC had previously stated he didn't like stuff like that in his articles. Sorry for any potential misinterpretation |
| 11. By: ripperlv on 09-04-2010 11:04:43 Chris I'm just curious. Two weeks ago, were you already thinking shut this guy down now? How do you pick the exact # of innings? I know the Nationals wished they had the magic number. |
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