.

This is not a prediction that Mike Montgomery will win 150 games in his career.  Got it?  So relax, LrKrBoi29, unfurrow your brow, and ease into the moment.

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So it was around 1980 when Dr. D first sat in the third deck and watched a left hand pitcher throw a "parachute" changeup.  From that vantage point, y'unnerstand.  (By the way, Dr. D is exactly Edgar's and Moyer's age, so it's not like 1980 baseball makes him a doddering old fool.  ... well, actually, it's a lot like that.  :: christopher walken pushing michelle pfeiffer out a window ::  But don't be too put off by the Kingdome refs, kiddies.  Edgar ain't done yet.)

Back to the "parachute" changeup.  We got psyched up for an Orioles game, as did Willie Horton and Bruce Bochte.  Mike Flanagan :: he says drolly:: rather anticipated this overexcitement on the M's part, and real early on he reared wayyyyy back and fired a pitch with all his might ... Horton or somebody swung when the ball was halfway* to the plate.  It was a fascinating sight, from a Goodyear Blimp visual perspective.  With me so far?  If you get that visual, you don't really need the rest of the article.

It seemed like Flanagan did this every other pitch, and it always worked.  After about two innings, of course, the Bugs Bunny Mariner lineup was psyched out of their minds.

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The next pitcher that we saw reproduce this visual was Butch Henry, doing it in relief for the Boston Red Sox.  Dunno how many times he threw a "swing halfway to the plate" pitch.  (This produced a classic debate on the 1999 AOL STATS board in which Dr. D gushed about Henry's chances to become a starting pitcher.  ... result, he got injured, if you must know.) 

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A really notable pitcher who could do this was Paul Abbott.  If you think the pre-Michael Pineda blog-o-sphere debate was funny, you should have seen the STATS board debate on Paul Abbott right before he came up.

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Felix does not really do this.  His pitches are the same speed, except his curve which is not very slow, and hitters take his curve.  So, as great as Felix is, it doesn't necessarily mean he can produce Bugs Bunny swings with the pitch halfway to the plate.

Randy Johnson did not do it.

Jamie Moyer had one of the best deadfish changeups since 1970, but it didn't really produce the hilarious swings.  Guys took garbage swings at it.  Most definitely.  Lots of garbage swings.  But that was because the pitch was outside the zone, well, kind of outside the arcs of their bats.

Point is, it's not often you see the kinds of swings that the Royals took tonight on Mike Montgomery.   Since Taijuan has a terrible offspeed game, and James Paxton's (right now) leaves a lot to be desired, and Hisashi Iwakuma throws all pitches within a 7-MPH range, and so on ... 

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Dr. D did not get seated until the 2nd inning, so didn't see the miraculous escape in the 1st.  Maybe you can fill him in.  But in the 2nd and 3rd innings, it seemed like Mike Montgomery got five "Bugs Bunny" swings on changeups and curves, and MOST OF THEM TO LEFT HAND BATTERS.  If you just joined us, an LHP cannot throw a changeup to a left hand batter because the pitch drops, and left hand batters' wheelhouses are down-and-in.  Watching Montgomery torture Royals hitters with this change was like watching a wide receiver run 10 yards by Richard Sherman all game long.  It is a re-think.

Tell you something about baseball.  You humiliate the ego'ed out ML hitters like that and you will get into their heads.  The Royals swung late on his fastball the rest of the night.  How many Back Leg Specials did they get?  I think it was zero, wasn't it?  Was that the case in Monday's game?

SSI doesn't care that Mike Montgomery threw a shutout, doesn't care that the result was great.  It cares that he outpitched Felix Hernandez.  Not too many pitchers are capable of a performance like that; it's like a 481-foot home run.

"Saber" corner:  Montgomery was the first Mariner lefty ever to throw a shutout with 0 walks and 10+ strikeouts.  "Mariner lefties ever" includes a Christy Mathewson-level figure in baseball history.

"Scout" corner:  Montgomery, in inning #7, finally slowed down his arm action on a curve ball, telegraphing it.  The hitter weakly bounced it foul.  But it was like baby-rubbing your eyes, opening them again, and having it confirmed that you hadn't been seeing things.

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After the game, there were two ex-ML players talking about the chances that Mike Montgomery is busting out.  Mike Blowers, on the postgame, was more animated than we have heard him at any time.  "An absolutely amazing performance," he started, and built from there.  Lloyd McClendon was extremely unanimated, but kept directing the conversation to the idea that Mike Montgomery is jelling in 2015.

Montgomery is NOT an SSI Best Bet.  Why?  Because it's not clear that he can reproduce the arm action on this changeup.  But what if he can?  And you know how much Dr. D enjoys his 76-MPH Barry Zito curve ball.  If either pitch turns out to be reproducible, you're in bidness.  A change speed game like that works better in the majors than it does in the minors.  The egos are bigger.

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Dr. D had grumbled about the Mariners verbally stiff-arming Hisashi Iwakuma.  This paragraph will have to serve as an engraved apology.

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Continually, you run into the idea that Montgomery throws his toughest pitches in the toughest game situations.  How is this possible?  Picture yourself riding minor league buses for 7 long years, the length of the notorious famine in Egypt.  Also the length of George W. Bush's and Barack Obama's tenures, depending on your perspective.

Now imagine arriving at your one* chance to be rich and famous.  Carpeted locker rooms, triple deck stadiums, TV, all that stuff.  Three games or your career's over.*  Let's say that Moethedog got one golf tournament to join the PGA senior tour and make $20,000,000; either he shoots it under par and makes the $20M, or he shoots it +1 over par and goes home for the rest of his life.  How could he step up to the first tee and be calm?  He could not.  But Mike Montgomery does this.

Dr. Naka once insisted that makeup was the most important difference between a successful major leaguer and one who washes out.  He said this when predicting that Michael Morse would successfully hit big league pitching.

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We are not predicting 150 wins for Montgomery.  We are enjoying his performance.  And enjoying a very considerable moment of hope.  So sue us.

So sue us,

Dr. D