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=== Kevin Millwood ===

Preseason, we admired the onomatopoetic names of Kevin Millwood, Joe Blanton and Jeff Suppan.  Blanton sounds like bludgeon - his pitching style and his physical appearance suggest un-subtle approaches to victory.  Millwood's blue-collar approach does conjure images of a guy with three days' stubble bending over a table saw.  Suppan gives you pitching enough to, well, we won't say feast on, but enough to subsist on.

This might have been Millwood's table-saw'iest game of the year.  He came into the game averaging 6.60 strikeouts and 2.99 walks; with Miguel Olivo neglecting Millwood's rawhide-UCL cutter and slider, the M's #5 starter fanned 0 men and walked 3.

Dr. D had to blink several times when he saw the box score.  It wound up being, by definition, a "quality start."  The man just has a way of keeping his thumbs off the line of the blade.

One of yer all-time great 4-and-10 seasons.  Millwood is the one Mariner pitcher this year to suffer a W/L and ERA fate far worse than he deserves.  He's 37 years old, still firing the elbow-rending slider, still doing it Every. Fifth. Day.  What a workhorse!

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=== Charlie Furbush ===

He's got 11.1 strikeouts, 2.6 walks, and a 44% grounder rate.  Push the 2x4 of Furbush's stats through Ron Shandler's BPV table saw and you come up with a BPV of 189 ... which would have been the #1 ranked BPV in baseball for relievers, 10 saves.  Furbush is going to be a true roto darling next spring, one of the five or ten "Big Secrets" on everybody's draft board.

From a tools-scouting standpoint, Furbush's "effective wildness" inside the zone does not hurt him one time through the lineup.  As a reliever, the HR problem is controlled.  That leaves his crackling sidearm stuff and with it, he is becoming this decade's version of Arthur Rhodes.

 .............................

Furbush's pitch movement is weird:  his fastball sinks and tails wayyyyyy armside.  His slider sinks and cuts wayyyyy gloveside.  The hitters obviously cannot distinguish until the ball breaks; Furbush's 81 MPH slider has an astounding run value of +3.93 runs saved per 100 sliders thrown, and that's despite throwing it 40% of the time.  That's better than anything Arthur Rhodes ever did.

His fastball, though only 90-92 MPH, is impossible to pick up out of his hand.  He's wild with it, because he's practically airborne as he lets the ball go, with no anchor on the ground at all.  But you know what?  Furbush is now, and has always been, wild WITHIN the zone.  He has never had a dubious strike %, and never had a dubious first strike %.  

Charlie Furbush can throw strikes.  It sure as sheep-dip doesn't look like he should be able to.  But he's never had a problem doing so.  And now that he's down to just two pitches, now that his gopheritis is controlled in the bullpen, we're seeing the best of Charlie Furbush.  Oh by the way, he can easily go 2.0 innings.  He can go 3.0 innings.  Some games that is very important.  Like Monday's game.

He is assuming his role as The New Arthur Rhodes.  And that takes a whale of a lot of the sting out of the Fister deal.

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