=== Tracer ===

AFLAC question of the day was:  who "stole for the cycle" three times in 1909.  I don't know whether they actually superimposed the question over a TV shot of the glorious "bronze" statue of Ty Cobb in the stadium. They might have separated the shots by a minute or two.

They don't work real hard to stump you, which is good, because they'll tell you before you've read the question.  It's like Hermoine was teaching potion class, asking the question and then raising her hand as high as possible, hopping up to get the fingers a bit higher into the air...

Story I remember from a book in grade school:  a rookie catcher bragged that when he got to Detroit, Cobb would never dare run on him.  Cobb got on base in the first game ... called time out ... and informed the catcher that he was going to steal second, third, and home.  "He did, too, and stole two other bases that day" the writer finished up.

The Mariners are frequently showing us what 1901-09 deadball era games looked like:  Wednesday, for example, they got two hits in three hours, and they won the game.   It's a nice change of pace this year, the constant pitchers' duels, like going on a picnic for your day off as opposed to playing 3-on-3.

As a general rule, I'll take the 3-on-3.

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=== How Many FA Years Will the Kid Sell Us ===

Felix won his 50th.  He'll be 23 years of age for a few more weeks. 

Maddux won #50 when 24, and won MORE than 300 additional after that.  Clemens won #50 when 24, on the strength of two straight 20-win seasons, and also won 304 more.  

Carlton was 24 when he won his 50th, and then notched 279 more.  The Big Unit was 28 years old (!), and is at 303... he must be the slowest-to-50-wins among the 300-game winners.  I guess he'll be the slowest to 400 wins, too, being as he's at 8 strikeouts and 3 walks this year.

Glavine was 25 when he won #50, and of course was at the sunrise of a long series of sparkling W/L's.  He finished 305-203, exactly a .600 winning percentage, equivalent to a 96-win season.

They keep telling me that W's mean nothing, but the list of guys with 300 wins run good FIPs, I'm guessing.  :- )  ... Wins don't mean "nothing."  In the short term they generally mean less than XERA.  But every stat tells us something, and over a long period of time, W's and W-L% contain a lot of information.

A month ago, Kjurkian assured us that the next pitcher to win 300 is not yet in the majors.  I'd like to know who is going to look better, at 23, than Felix does right now.

..................

If I were a superstar pitcher in year 5, I'd feel like I was taking a huge risk, NOT locking in my first $50 million.

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=== Blue Period?  For AL Hitters ===

Wok had got a Q about the Bedard mechanics and Wok, correctly, replied that the danger was in getting cute and losing the release point.  It has been absolutely no issue whatsover.  Amazing!   Felix just said, "Hey, I'll pitch like Bedard," and BOOM, another six wins.  Somebody get Byung-Hyun Kim in here, too.

..................

Most of the time when Felix throws something this year, I have no idea what I just saw.   He has started reallllllllly having fun with the game.  Postgame, Bill Krueger chalk-talked a number of creative Felix pitches, including a 93-mph cutter, and gushed that "Felix is making stuff up on the mound!"

Which echoes an Inside Pitch quote about Mike Mussina at Stanford.  Mussina mastered his craft so early, that he went on to Jazz Improv when he was about 22.

From 2006-08, Felix' only guarantee pitch was an 89-mph slider that broke hard straight down, like a Gaylord Perry spitter.  I never see that pitch any more, or actually ANY pitch from 2006-08 any more.

Felix throws 93 mph swerveballs, 89-91 mph "forkballs," 84 mph yellow hammers, and whatever other pitch arc captures his imagination at the moment.  His joy is palpable.  Every fifth day is a Deadball Era game.

The last time Felix got bombed, the Angels came out to take away Strike One.  The Tigers did that today:  they used "pepper" swings to slap the first two FB's for singles.  Felix, this time, immediately started throwing offspeed pitches.  The Tigers finished with one run. 

Rob Johnson, on the postgame, confirmed their adjustment, saying that "we took away their aggressiveness" with some offspeed first-pitch strikes.  After two pitches.  Tonight's "coin of the realm" was the garbage swing.

..................

Felix, in 2009, has entered the Jazz Improv era of his career, like Picasso mastering realism as a teenager and spiralling off into a Blue Period, and other "periods," that would reinvent all of art.

I don't know whether Picasso himself was "blue" during his blue period.  He painted a lot of unhappy *other* people.  Felix is painting IN FRONT OF a lot of unhappy people.

(A lot of folks figure that Picasso was just throwing buckets of paint at canvas, and don't realize that Picasso was doing Rembrandts as a teenager.  He apparently simply got bored with them.  The painting at left was done when Picasso was 15.  I'm not aware of any realistic masterpieces that he did after this one.)

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=== It Never Gets Old, Dept. ===

Who in the world figured that Russ Branyan could hit lefties?  Oh, okay, all of YOU did.

Somebody on TV said that tonight's was Branyan's 7th home run off left hand pitchers.  It was off a sidearm lefty, a slider, letter-high, outside corner.  VERY tough for a lefty hitter, started out at Branyan's head and broke crisply from East to West all the way across the plate.  Then the ball broke crisply from South to North all the way across Bobby Seay's will to live.

My son asked me, literally, if Seay was weeping after the pitch.  I couldn't tell, but I know that the Brewers' front office is.  Branyan is leading the AL in home runs for $1.4 million.

Branyan's OPS+ for the year remains at 150, and he is slugging > .500 against LEFT hand pitchers.  The weather forecast remains rosy:  Branyan is Safeco Field's prototype baseball hitter.

Cheers,

Dr D