No sir! I didn't see you playing with your dolls sir!

LOL!

San Francisco Giants vs. Philadelphia Phillies - Recap - September 02, 2009 - ESPN

In Brad Penny's first start away from Boston, he goes 8 innings, gives up 5 hits and 0 runs. Over the Philadelphia Phillies.

At this point, I'm thinking there is something up with the pitching coaches up in Boston.

Apparently because we're trying to help Gwinnett win their division (1 GB of Durham after tonight's loss, six games left) by not calling up some other options (Canizares, Brandon Jones, hell even Chris Burke)

Bah! You forgot the key word. "again" :D

Yup, that's why last night's game was important, knew they were going up against Hernandez today. Even though the Angels have had a little success against Hernandez, so far as I recall (all relative, he still pitches well against us as with any team), you had to figure this was going to be a hard one to win. So losing to some kid named Fister (and on a night when Santana was on his game) is more than a little flabbergasting.

Obviously Garrett Jones isn't slugging .700 anymore, but he was in the .870 OPS range last month. And he's starting Sept with a bang. I'd say he has a very good chance at winning the ROY. Although him and McCutch might split some votes, and enable someone else to win.

Or the National League :)

You mean against the same team that utterly destroyed the AL Champion in the World Series last year? :)

And didn't we already have this discussion with, say, Mark Teixeira showing that apparently in 2008 that NL pitching was far better than AL pitching ;).

Didn't we just have this discussion? One series is too small of a sample size to draw anything out of.

It is difficult to take claims that pitching in the NL is just as difficult as pitching in the AL seriously, if for no other reason than the pitcher batting.

Tongue in cheek my friends!

Royals clinch a losing season last night. Now all that's left to do is secure that #1 draft pick!

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure the pitcher batting doesn't change you from putz to ace overnight either.

I'm more inclined to lean heavily on small sample size but as that grows, it calls into question Boston's pitching coach staff.

SI

I was only speaking to the AL-NL thing.

As far as John Farrell goes, his track record speaks for itself as far as I'm concerned.

yeah. i don't think Farrell is the problem. He's pretty much universally recognized throughout baseball as being damn good isn't he?

Again, I really thing this all disappears in a month when neither Smoltz nor Penny keep it up. Again, I think small sample size is the biggest contributor to this little side story.

SI

Smoltzie's pitching again in about an hour. We'll find out. :)

Also, Smoltz will be in the bullpen in about a month, so the story may change. He'll be ridiculously effective as a setup guy.

Smoltz got lit up by the Nationals while still playing in the NL. :) (Granted, it was his first game back)

Yeah- it's a lot easier when you're only going through the lineup once and can get an extra couple of mph on each of your pitches as well as lean on the better ones that day without risk of overexposure.

SI

In the case of Smoltz, he was pitching quite a bit better than his ERA showed in Boston. He was the victim of bad luck in terms of fielding behind him (only a .617 DER at Boston) and LOB % (only 56.9% with Boston). He was due for some positive regression to the mean, and that has happened for him with St. Louis.

As for Penny, it's one game. He only struck out 2 in 8 innings, meaning he was somewhat fortunate that all the balls put in play were in positions to be fielded and turned into outs. He's not going to get enough starts in the rest of the season at SF to really tell us a whole lot, but he didn't appear to be suffering from bad luck in Boston - he simply isn't a great pitcher, just an average one.

Didn't they already do this on opening day? :)

WHERE IS YOUR SMOLTZ NOW, HUH

I hope Buster Posey gets to start tonight. Just keep resting that quad, Bengie.

Nah, there's always the pesky Nats and Pirates to contend with ;)

SI

And apparently the Orioles and Indians are rejoining them.

Ya, I find it hard to believe that Smoltz and Penny are really Cy Young caliber aces and Farrell was holding them back.

I mean if Lester and Beckett left, what would they turn into, 30-game winners?

The Orioles are a team on the rise, for what it's worth. I wouldn't be shocked if they passed the Blue Jays next year.

Smoltzie didnt actually look too bad today, not a great start but definitely better than anything he did in Boston.

They will absolutely finish ahead of Toronto next season. The Orioles have prospects and a plan. Toronto doesn't have much of anything, really.

Except Vernon Wells' gigantic contract still. lol

Agreed.

I may not be a fan of the head office, but if nothing else they found out that they have a lot of good young arms very close to be ready for major league action (or ready to go already in the right situation).

They need to address a few spots in the field, but pitching wise they should be very strong next year, even if they lose Halladay. At this point they're certainly hoping both Marcum and McGowan come back at 100% but the rotation would still be very solid if only one of them comes back as a top 3 in the rotation type pitcher.

Not saying the Orioles are going to do poorly, but I don't think this is a given by any stretch of the imagination. They've still got some awfully good younger hitters (Hill and Lind, potentially Snider) and what looks to be a pretty solid pitching staff. If they can avoid the injury bug and make a couple of good free agent moves (this is by far the most troublesome area with JP in charge, but things may change once the season is over) or trades they're going to be a good squad.

Yeah, 4 runs in 6 innings is nothing horrible. He ran out of gas, obviously.

Sweet. Velez hits the first pitch for a HR in the Lincecum/Pedro dual.

Lincecum-Pedro "duel"?

Did they somehow import Pedro circa 2000 in for this game?

Philadelphia takes two out of three from the Giants but should feel damn lucky they didn't get swept.

Apparently, yes.

IP	H	R	ER	BB	K
P. Martinez (W, 3-0)	7.0	5	1	1	0	9

Smoltz and his alleged tipping of pitches, maybe, Brad Penny no. The guy is a one-pitch pitcher, and the balls in play were fielded for once. (Though I did tell y'all to pick him up for your fantasy teams.)

DT/Ronnie - I don't have evidence he's a bad pitching coach, but the evidence of John Farrell being a good pitching coach is about as available as that of Varitek's "superior" game-calling ability.

Or San Francisco takes one out of three from the Phillies but should feel damn lucky Boston cut Brad Penny last week. :D

Seriously though, I'd expect Philly-San Francisco to be one hell of a series.

Fortunately, the Phils would have home-field advantage for that one.

I'd say both statements are pretty accurate.

lol...I was out and about, so couldn't respond with irony at my own comment, but I, too, was thinking when I heard the score, "Whatdya know, they really did import Pedro 2000 for the game!". :)

No, they just faced the Giants playing like its 19-fucking-67. The Phillies score 3 frigging runs, and win the Series.

Rays tied an annoying little stat with 17 pitching changes in a 3-game non-extra inning series.

Just heard an interesting report on an ESPN news show. One of the guests said that Veritek is notorious for calling a ton of fastballs and that's one of the reasons both Smoltz and Penny struggled. Neither have the fastballs to beat good hitters and once StL and SF had these guys change speeds more, they've been more effective (he also said a similar thing about Pedro in Philly).

That might be a small part of it for Smoltz, but the fact of the matter is Smoltz didn't have much luck on balls put in play - Boston only managed to turn less than 62% of them into outs, which is well below the expected 68-71% range.

No. He was pitching against a AA offense.

Fucking Giants! How does Lincecum have 7 starts allowing 2 runs or less with no win?!

Learn how to situational hit!!!:banghead::banghead::banghead:

Like Crapshoot said, 3 runs given up and we lose the series 1-2.

Yeah, I think it was fanball where they were talking about those stats a few days ago and how he was just ridiculously unlucky and it was somewhat foolish to make a decision on such a small sample size.

SI

{shrug} Jair Jurjenns has 11 starts allowing 2 runs or less without a win.

9 no decisions, gave up 2 or less in 7 of those, 2 ER or less in 8 of them.
*(one of those was a 2 inning rain delayed thing)

9 losses, gave up 2 or less in 4 of those, gave up only 2 ER in a fifth.
*(also had a 2 inning rain delay outing in a 1 run allowed outing)

Zack has a pair of losses and 4 no decisions where he's given up 2 or less and another loss where he gave up 4 but only 2 were earned. Every one of those has been 6 innings or more.

SI

Red Sox closer*Jonathan Papelbon fined again for slow pace - MLB - SI.com



I wish they did this more often. Actually, what I really wish they would do this with would be batters. Again, no, you don't need 30 seconds in between each pitch to do all sorts of crap. Get in the box and swing, jackass.


SI

Yep, Maddon pissed me off last year when he brought in a lefty(or maybe it was a righty) in the 9th for 2 batters. He was winning by 5.

Tampa Bay Rays vs. Pittsburgh Pirates - Box Score - June 27, 2008 - ESPN

Eric Wedge is really bad about using guys for one-two batters for seemingly no sense either.