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That irritates me.
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One of the following two strike zone plots are from Wade Miley's shutout last night, and the other is from his 9-run game the time before. Can you tell which is which?
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Miley 2
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The second plot is from the 9-run game against a pathetic offense. The first one is the shutout against the smokin' hot Indians. if anything, the second plot is the better one, but they're very similar. ALL strike zone plots look alike after 100 pitches. Wade Miley wasn't perfect last night; he had a two-run homer go ten feet foul for him, and he had three doubles hit Kyle Seager in the mitt, and another couple of line drive hits knocked down by Robinson Cano or somebody. Don't get me wrong; he was good, as he usually is. And he had a key adjustment, I thought.
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Here's a point of meditation for yer. We know it is chewy because it has chewed for us, like a Tootsie roll with 600 chews, for years. Maybe since Jim Bouton in 1969, rolling his eyes at Eddie O'Brien who would praise or curse his pitchers after throwing exactly the same pitch but getting different results. Newly promoted minors hitter rams the first pitch foul into the stands. Eddie jumps out of the dugout. "Hey, watch the first pitch on this guy!" ... um, it's now strike one, Eddie.
Miley didn't become a new pitcher last night, though. Still less did he find his inner courage. The real key, obviously, was the beard ... no. Last night they were also talking about James Paxton's brand-new attitude on the mound. SIIIGHHHHhhhhhhh. He wanted it before too, guys, just like he wanted it during his first 30 ML starts, when his ERA was 3.16.
Taijuan Walker doesn't need to want it more tonight. He needs somethin', but not the realization that it hurts to get KO'ed in the fourth. That, he's already got.
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Pitchers laugh about second-guessers who just don't get it, that pitching is one ounce subtleties, two cups luck/happenstance and maybe a dash of adjustment. Except they have to tell the journos that it's 100% courage, that they found their inner warrior today.
Question: If a pitcher executes pretty much the same way in every start -- and he does -- why does he give up 9 runs one time, and 0 runs the next?
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'till then,
Dr D
Comments
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:- )
Next post up in about a half hour. Just "warming up" the crowd Ed Sullivan style. Or is it Carrot Top style?
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From Offspeed:
The batter is using an implement uniquely unsuitable to accomplish his task. A baseball bat is normally somewhat less than a yard long; it weighs somewhere from 29 to 36 ounces. At its thickest part it is 2.25 inches in diameter. In order to strike the ball solidly, the ball must hit near the center of the bat’s circumference about six inches from the bat’s end. The spot varies from bat-to-bat depending on the type and hardness of the wood, shape and weight of the bat, but at its largest this spot is about five square inches in area.
Think of that for a moment. A hitter must swing a yard-long piece of round wood in such a way that he contacts a small round ball moving faster than he is legally allowed to drive his car. The contact has to occur within a five-square inch area of the wood. The plane of the strike zone varies from hitter-to-hitter but is theoretically 17 inches wide and approximately two feet tall. Of course, the zone is not a plane at all, but a volume of approximately 4.5 cubic feet. It extends from the front of home plate to the rear and a ball passing through it at any point is supposed to be a strike. In real life, the zone tends to be wider and shorter than the rulebook stipulates. Nonetheless, the batter is defending more than four cubic feet of space with a five-square-inch weapon and he has to swing the bat at a speed of 70 miles per hour in order to move it from his shoulder to the center of the plate. “It is far more likely that the pitcher will accidentally throw the ball in the way of the hitter's bat than it is for the hitter to time the pitch perfectly and execute flawless swing mechanics to achieve 100% on-time contact on their own,” according to Perry Husband, who has studied pitcher-batter interactions extensively.