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You haven't seen baseball pitches lately.  Dr. D will hand-pick some vids for you.  As you know, he lives to serve.

Here's a jam pitch, 95 on the hands, with a Iwakuma-slow motion despite the save situation.  

Here's a two-plane slider, starting in the zone and Nintendo'ing out of it, to spray the C02 all over a chemical fire.  Like they say, never get beat with your worst pitch.

Here's the vaunted change.  Apparently, with a parachute like that, it doesn't much matter where you land it.  The third pitch is also a Killer Cambio; in between them you get an ump's-eye view of the Jeff Nelson slider.  Pitch #4 is a slider, pitch #5 being a mid-90's heater.  Reminds you of an old Bill James complaint from his Royals days:  "Weaver has a staff full of pitchers with 95 MPH fastballs and they absolutely refuse to throw them to you." 

Super-slo-mo on his mechanics.  Although he tilts the head up, he does not lean back.  Actually the base of his spine potato-bugs into his left knee very neatly.  Although (as a burly guy) he doesn't follow through over, low, and into the glove as you'd like, he gets a loosey-goosey decel on the right arm.  There's a reason he's pitched 13 of 14 seasons healthy out of the pen.

Rodney walked guys because of a suspect pitching motion; Benoit walks a few because his repertoire is not at all simple.  It's easy to throw fastballs for strikes; it's also easy for a LH to throw sliders for strikes to LH.  But a righty relief pitcher who mixes three pitches, that guy is not going to have 1+ walks.

.....

Having three nuclear pitches is fine and all that, but it doesn't mean much next to having both Spanish and French in your name.  Two short words, a bookend-y rhyme no less.  "HHwahh KEENE" was actually Dr. D's own "Spanish" name in language class for five years.  You can say it so sharply that you cut your own tongue.  Then you finish with the velvety Merlot of "mmBenn rWaaaaaa," ensuring a slow decel on the exhale.  One of your all-time great baseball names.  Every time they announce his entry on TV, I'm going to bask.

.....

Jeff Sullivan just wrote something on Joaquin Benoit.  The intersection of those two concepts make this link a must.  Exec Sum:  Jeffy thinks Benoit is really, REALLY good.

Amusingly, one of the commenters had a neat counter to "Levon's" acid rejection of the Mariners' thinking on this trade.  The FG commenter came back quizzically with, "Does this mean the Padres are punting?"

That'll do for us too,

Dr D