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Q.  Which Mariner gets the starting nod in the Lee Van Cleef role?

A.  I'll go with Nick Franklin.  I'll bet he could take it places Lee would have enjoyed.  Raul Ibanez could handle it.  Like Van Cleef, Rauuul believes in acting first and talking about it later.

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Q.  Maybe Farquhar is getting that "cutter" out-and-over because he's missing his spots?

A.  That goes in the BAD category, yes, the command.

We've slo-mo'ed it a fair amount.  Farquhar does miss the mitt a lot, and especially he misses it a lot for a closer.

Between the Seattle Sounders and Manchester United there is a long, long ways.  No matter how excited you get about Martins or Dempsey or that Xabi Alonso holding mid they got, the fact is that the gap between [Seattle] and [a truly elite side] is vast.

Farquhar is a AAA pitcher with a freakish combination of stuff, as it turns out, but between him and a technically great pitcher like Koji Uehara there is ... well, there is no comparison technically.  And that's what you'd expect.

..........

Farquhar is very capable of missing the mitt by the entire area of the strike zone, low-away to up-in.  And sometimes the slider is centered because he missed, yes.

Still!  Farquhar isn't centering all those sliders because he's missing.  Farquhar is not trying to avoid centered sliders.  He likes the centered slider, thrown for a "called" strike.  And righty batters are gleefully accepting the invitation, to the tune of a .684 slugging percentage.

The sinking fastball, similar.  It comes in at a lousy angle, even if it's 94 MPH, and thrown at the knees it drops right into the automatic "pitch to contact" area.

Where is Mike Zunino when you need him, man.   He'd get this organized and he'd get it organized Now.

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Q.  What else is bad.

A.  The elbow's real high.  Very easy for Dr. D, anyway, to imagine injury here.  As you know, this entire subject is whistling in the dark, for all of us.

.........

Dr. D fancies that he has seen Farquhar "tipping" -- he tends to grab the ball and huck it real quick on the fastball, without any pause at all, in a balk motion.  He jussssst barely avoids the balk on most sliders, and he has a discernible 1-second pause on the curve ball that he dislikes throwing.  You know, as if the better he likes the pitch call, the more eager he is to get to it.  And he don' like the curve call, man.

Or not.

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We've talked about experience.  How do we know whether the league will "book" Danny Farquhar?  He's not steel-tempered.  That would be true for anybody with 40 innings pitched.  Which is why guys with 40 innings pitched don't get $50M contracts.

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The sinking fastball, is kind of not as fast as it looks.  It's more hittable than the gun says it should be.

.........

Farquhar's dislike for the curve is bizarre.  At the level 101 scan, SSI sung its praises to the skies, but he's now down to a piddling 17% on its usage.  Imagine Tom Gordon throwing 17% curves, or Trevor Hoffman throwing 17% changeups.

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Q.  Um, so this meatball has 9,000 problems, and he also has 14K, 3BB, 0.5HR.

A.  Quick, Hobson.  The "good" article.

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