.
Q. What were those diagnostic criteria again?
A. Thusly:
.
Q. Is SSI still confident that this R/X is well matched to the patient?
A. Most definitely.
.
Q. Where do we rank him bullet the first ... , scale 1 – 10?
A. 10+. That probably sells him short.
Brandon had a deadly fastball and his intentions were worse than that. First batter of the game, Bourjos, four pitches, four fastballs, the last one 95 mph low on the black. Here's the Game Day. No more questions, perp. You may slink away.
Second batter, Trout, again here we have a 1-2 pitch and here we go ... 95 MPH, 1/2 of one baseball's width off the plate. This time Trout swung, but he didn't catch any more of the ball than Bourjos did with the bat glued to his shoulder.
...............
So Maurer had found a new favorite weapon, the hot fastball on the black, but the punchline to this story was in the jam pitches. Quite a few times Shoppach called for fastballs away, or breaking pitches, and Mauer shook him off to fire heaters inside on the hands.
If a pitcher with a plus fastball is going to paint the black, and is going to bounce over to back the hitters off the plate… in back-to-back pitches… he is going to be effective. That's any pitcher. When he has plus stuff into the bargain, you're back to the Freddy Garcia type of discussions.
We wouldn't be talking about it except that he did it with such obvious intention, moving the ball in and out and leading Shoppach in the dance.
Man, the kid learns quick.
.
Q. Bullet two ... He expanded the plate with the slider?
A. The first time through the lineup, virtually all of the sliders started in the zone and broke out of it. The second time through, he started poaching gimme strikes on the first pitch. As you know, that's because the Angels had to get their bats started early.
Absolutely a 10 for 10 there. Without the slightest exaggeration, Ryan Dempster would have been proud to pitch this baseball game. I honestly can't understand how Brandon Maurer got so coherent, so fast.
G, is that something you've talked about? Not just the makeup, but the pitchability?
.............
On the telecast, Blowers talked about the sliders looking like fastballs and breaking out of the zone, saying that this is the difference between "wasted pitches" and put away pitches.
Krueger referred to the "pull-offs" by righties on the slider -- actually there were three or four times when righties turned their backs to the pitch, buckling their knees. Late in the game there were a couple of garbage swings on sliders FAR outside of the zone. Blowers' remark on that, " they just are not picking up the slider well at all tonight."
Which brings us back to the original "Invisibility Pitch" article based on the spring training form.
.
Q. 6 IP, 7 H, 1 BB, 6 K ... 10 swings and misses. Those are good stats, but not overwhelming.
A. He was pretty unlucky to give up seven hits. The Angels are leading the league in AVG and quite a few went between the fielders. It WAS a shutout. There are a few guys who haven't done that lately.
His slider, in Arizona, was breaking down 0 to 2 inches. Thursday, it cracked down by 3-9 inches, and they were wayyyy out in front of it anyway. Invisibility Pitch, babe.
... the Angels fought off a lot of fastballs on the hands, blomping them into the dugout. And they fouled outside fastballs off weakly. He got 7 whiffs on sliders. They were in-between, way in front of the slider and fouling even 89 MPH fastballs off late.
Krueger said "he had them eating out of the palm of his hand." That was the case, yes.
.
Q. How did he adjust so FAST?!
A. The pitching coach, manager, and Blowers all referred to the fact that Maurer had gotten buried in scouting reports.
Blowers in particular mentioned something that hadn't quite hit me: in the minor leagues, you don't use those at all, really.
That's a revelation. You come to the triple-decker stadium, your pitches on SportsCenter, a new league of hitters, all of them are better than the cleanup hitter you faced in AAA ... and you have to start pitching completely differently? Pitching to their weaknesses instead of to your strengths?!
Just imagine how different that would be. Your entire life, you've pitched in sequences familiar to you, ones that keep you in flow and aggressive. BANG. Now you're going to throw what the hitter doesn't want, not throw what you want.
That would be like a quarterback thinking in terms of his favorite receivers, using his Marshawn Lynch to set up his routes to them, and now ... whoops, hold it. That defense doesn't like to defend the tight end, and doesn't like QB draws. Okay, let's get ready for your first NFL game. It's on Monday Night, by the way...
So Maurer got back to just rocking back and throwing his game. I don't know how many times he shook off Kelly Shoppach. 50% of the time?
.............
On TV, there was a quote. From Doug Fister. He said he literally throws scouting reports away, never looks at them.
Steve Carlton once said that pitching should be nothing more than a glorified game of catch.
.
Q. He was shaking off Shoppach?
A. Constantly. And pitching at a tempo like the ballpark was burning down around his ears. He's shaken off the initial deer-in-headlights thing and is now back to that superdeedooperlyawesome Freddy Garcia mound presence.
Big fun :- )
It's funny. I was about to write an ominous post about the season being done in a week or two, when we hit the site and read Gordon's article about not giving up yet. He was right. Plenty of time to give up, if and when they're 15-and-30; no reason to do it when they're 9-and-15.
But the funny thing is: even if the season had been over, I'd have enjoyed watching Maurer pitch, about 90% as much. Three days out of five, I'm having fun whatever their record.
.
Q. By the way, did he use two pitches or three?
A. Two. ... late in the game he poached some called strikes with the change curve. Whew.
.
Q. Dr's Prognosis at this point, with the third wave of evidence now in?
A. We revert to the Arizona prediction: I'd rather have Maurer right now even than a healthy Erasmo, and that's saying a whale of a lot.
He's going to lose some games, I'd imagine ... no way he can locate the fastball as razor-sharp as he did tonight, and no way he can crackle the slider quite like that. Let's say 70%, 80% chance that Brandon Maurer is a better-than-average starter this season, which is comparable to that of a lot of very rich guys around the league anyway.
But he reverts to best bet ... he'll have a really nice season, no doubts there, but SSI doesn't get to claim him as a Best Bet win because he'll win in a template that is about 15 degrees off than the one originally forseen. And, of course, because I didn't have his back, enough, after two games.
Sigh. It's just as well ... [grudgingly] You gotta give G-Money a LITTLE bit of the credit on Maurer I suppose. He was a week or two ahead of the curve on this one.
For such a pathetic baseball team, I'd like to know who you'd trade the M's Big Three SP's for.
BABVA,
Dr D
The Kid looked good. Right off the bat, 2 KOs with style. Had the Halos slumping back to dugout pronto. For good measure, he mixed in a few timely curveballs, mostly watched and called strikes, almost Wilhelmsian. Nice touch. For the other participants, our hitters, nice game. Timely hitting, Seager-power, Pegs coming through. It's just one game but it bodes well, 9-15. Baby steps, but in the right direction. I feel good about this.
This blog was insistent not to add more entitled vets to our starting lineup. The Doc was as livid as I have ever read. Garland got the axe, and youth was served. When Maurer struggled out of the gate, Doc gave the right prognosis and prescription. The Doc understands, and appreciates, what the front office is attempting to do, beyond the smug pontifications of other, better known writers. We know he has Baker's ear and respect. IF (big if) the front office pays attention to ANY blogger, it's this guy.
When I said that his first couple of outings were not indicative of Maurer's talent and pitching style. Now he's back to fastballs on the black (both sides) and breaking stuff in the zone (that may or may not fall out of the zone, which makes hitters afraid of looking stupid...and therefore makes them both passive and stupid).
He was looking all right the last couple of starts, but with no Ks that also wasn't his game. THIS is his game. It's gonna get fun when Erasmo gets back from injury... though he's starting to worry me, since he hasn't stepped foot on a mound in 5 weeks and "triceps soreness" is not a good reason for that. Triceps tear, yes, or rotator cuff yes. So we'll see.
Or there's Hultzen (who had better be fine after yesterday's weird "can't get loose" non-start.
Either guy would be welcome in a rotation that should be looking more than fine "on a go-forward basis" assuming we can avoid trading our good young pitchers again. Maurer's a smart pitcher with a bunch of competitiveness burning under that funky beard-patch thing. Like you said doc, Pitchability, makeup and stuff is a really nice combo.
All he needs now is consistency and health. No game that he's pitched has been a mirror of any other game. If he can stabilize on this side of the spectrum (and I expect him to) then we should be able to kick back and relax, knowing our top 3 arms are gonna keep us in every game.
Just up to the offense to win it, which they did a fine job of yesterday (way to go, young dudes).
~G
In Maurer's first start he got a bit unlucky. 2nd start he got beat up....but you have to imagine that in both he had the heebie jeebies to some extent. He threw the slider for strikes in those games...and got hurt a bit for it. Now he's learned to make the slider look like a strike and then......oops, ugly swing.
FB was laser guided at times. Precise would be the word.
And he threw a handful of very cool sloooow yakkers, just to tick them Angels off. Hey, even though he had the Batmobile and Batboat, Batman used the Batcopter once in a while. Take that Penguin!
AND our boy Maurer did it at a Maddux like rhythm. Rock and roll baby, let's go.
BTW, was his FB hotter than previous starts? Seemed like it.
Maurer, barring injury is going to throw in this league for the next dozen years. I hope he's ours for that time. There is no way he doesn't have a Joe Saunders type of career, with a significant upside, as well.
With his emergence (or perhaps he's just established himself as MLB-level) I think I'm rolling the next young gun, Hultzen, into the rotation as soon as Garland gets roughed up a couple of more times in a row (if he does). I'm not concerned about his occassional AAA rough starts. He can throw, let him do it up here. Maurer would have had a couple of AAA bumbling starts, too...were he in Tacoma right now.
Off topic: Can Andino do much more to establish that he is nothing but a replacement level IF? I know the M's have concerns about Triunfel's glove at SS. But his fielding % in Tacoma is exactly what Andino's is in Seattle right now. Or just gimme Miller.
Off topic #2: Franklin's 5-hit night has him looking like some kind of Nap Lajoie or something. He's in his 2nd AAA season, he has shown growth, he's mashing = he's ready. Houston, we have a problem. We won't wait for long to call him up, but we have to find a slot for him. We still blew it when we didn't get him some LF time in ST, I think, as it looks like we're not that inclined to roll him out at SS in Safeco. If we call him up and give him SS time, then Triunfel is odd man out.
#3: Romero with a rocket.
#4 Smoak made a couple of nice glove plays last night, will give him that. He hit two balls hard, but both were center cut pitches that he couldn't elevate. Ergo, both were outs. Kotchman guys, Kotchman.
#5: Peg's tater was off a CURVE ball! Wow....Improvement? Don't know. Wedge will probably sit him for Raul tonight.
#6: Hot dang, I love Seager's aggressive follow-through.
Go team. And bet the over on Maurer.
moe
While I am of course happy about the outcome this time I'm not real thrilled about Peguero swinging like that at ball four. There are a whole lot more of those where his outcome is swing-and-a-miss-take-a-seat than there are where he golfs that pitch out. It's like a guy can't get the sac bunt down but manages a two-strike hit. Nice to see the hit, but didn't execute the primary mission.
Maybe I'm the only one who thinks this. Maybe I'm just grumpy this morning. But we've all seen Peguero destroy the ball in one at bat only to strike out the other three because of swinging at a pitch in the dirt.
On the other hand, holy moley I think that's the first ball I've seen hit the batter's eye on the fly during a game.
Still think Thames was the guy.
I'm OK with Peguero taking that golf swing at the low, slow breaking pitch because he's proven that he can hit those and hit them hard. It's the fastballs out of the zone (anywhere out of the zone) that he can't be swinging at. He's proven that he absolutely cannot hit those pitches. But something slow and breaking down, swing away big guy - that's his wheelhouse.
Tee off on those breaking balls, Pegs, while you still get them.
Good comp amigo. That WAS how they reacted to it.
Wilhelmsen can get that reaction throwing it 30% (or 60%, LOL) of the time ... Maurer may be able to mix only 5% or 10% and get the same shell-shocked effect. But hey. If he swipes half-a-dozen strikes a game that way, great :- )
We've gotten a few things, back channel ... the M's read the locals including us. Zduriencik does also, not that the 'net chatter weighs heavily with him in view of the resources he listens to daily.
The M's as an org are loathe to give the public analysts even a hint of credibility ... most MLB front offices like to keep a good distance, but the M's in particular have always been as imperious as any org in baseball. You'd think they'd have won six championships.
What's a bit odd is that the MSM, other than Baker, carefully freezes SSI out of credit that it would gladly give if it were other blogs writing up the same insights. For example, on the Brandon League situation (where our analysis did affect the M's decisions), Drayer gave credit to Lookout Landing which was merely passing on (with credit!) SSI's material.
What I did, to become persona non grata with the sportswriters and radio guys, I dunno. Maybe it's that I come from a diverse political angle? It's a pretty intolerant community as far as worldview. But maybe it's just an obnoxious personality :- ) Maybe it's that they were friendly with Cameron before we got here, and any tension gets transferred.
But then Geoff Baker's links over here make up for that, by a factor of about three. He's above that type of thing.
................
Whether the org as a whole is imperious or not, I give Jack Zduriencik huge credit for the way he treats Baker. A lot of orgs would start pinching Baker's access in a petty kind of way, but Capt Jack and Sgt Wedge look him in the eye, treat him with respect, and deal with it.
Huge credit.
.................
Thanks for saying Rick. Gracious words.
With my memory, I don't remember much, but do remember that as we talked Pineda, and then the Big Three, you kept throwing Maurer in there as only one stride behind coming around the curve.
Is there a current Anointed Sleeper, one of Maurer's magnitude, that you EXPECT* to become a good ML pitcher if he doesn't get hurt?
Actually if you had one, it would be an article, right :- )
Man, didn't he?
This is ten degrees off subject, but is there a "rhythm" factor in golf? Maybe it's not pacing as you walk down the fairway, but maybe we're talking about tempo in the takeaway? On a golfer's best day, is he taking a bit less time between shots or a bit more?
Maurer's starter's rhythm is fun, fun FUN to watch. He's not graceful, but he's loose in a Kevin Appier drop-and-drive kinda way, and he wants to work fast. He's got his own PERSONALITY out there.
.............
By the way, thanks. That looks like six articles to me ...
Key distinction Grizzle. Couldn't agree more.
Last night I thought I saw progress on that...
If so, I'm all over that.
Spend some time with his numbers and his splits and his game logs.
Notice how absolutely piston-stroke consistent he's been right out of the box.
Notice how he's never given up more than 2 earned runs in any start.
Notice how he's pretty much struck out one guy per inning in every start.
Notice how he's 19 and pitching in the Midwest League. Erasmo wasn't there until 20. Maurer wasn't there until 20. Pineda was there at 19.
Now, of course, he'll get shelled tonight.
If you want a "true" sleeper it would be Stephen Landazuri, but I don't think I'd put him up at Maurer potential level.
But I didn't jinx him much.
Pike gave up 3 ER for the first time ever in 15 pro starts, but only 1 BB and 6 K in 5.2 IP.
If he wants to be a big leaguer, he has to face and overcome some adversity, right? Let's get it over with now.
Was on draft day. I love lefties with a good arsenal and great makeup (and a fastball that can be lefty-plus shortly).
Spec's already done a good job running him down. But the thing with Maurer is that weird injuries kept masking how good he was, as did his misleading draft round. Pike doesn't have that problem - everyone can see he's on a good track. The sleeper for me with injuries and lower draft status included would be Stephen Landazuri.
And the Ms just promoted him to High Desert this week, where he got the victory. For a guy trying to meet all the Brandon Maurer criteria, Stephen's a guy to look at. He's 2 years away from being Maurer, but I'd watch him close.
~G
Just so you guys know...I am of the increasingly fervent opinion that Kyle Seager is about to become Robinson Cano-good. It may get masked a bit by his home park, but Seager hits the ball as hard as Cano does, uses a similar trajectory panel as Cano, has a similar batting eye, and his contact rates are very close to as good. IMHO, he's goig to become far and away our best hitter since Edgar Martinez.
L-O-V-E the fact that he elevates to RF! Pencil him in for a long time.
Everyone focuses on Walker-Paxton-Hultzen, and then the little horse everyone overlooks - Maurer - becomes the first thoroughbred to break out. Similarly, the focus has been on Ackley-Smoak-Montero, and then here comes Seabiscuit Seager. Thanks for the report on how far this guy can go, Matt.
Mark me down as predicting the next Maurer (under-hyped just-get-it-done performer) will be lefty Roenis Elias. A 0.89 WHIP after 24 2/3 innings at Jackson. He's settling in as a good one.
nm
Because blue-chippers do fail. Back in the day we had Anderson and Meche as the blue-chippers, but injuries chopped them down to size and some dude named Pineiro took over.
Nothing says Ackley is gonna remain a struggling hitter (not struggling as much the last coupla weeks) but while he's working it out, it's very, VERY helpful to have someone producing from our ranks of youngsters.
Hultzen and Paxton and Walker have great levels of talent. Luckily they aren't the only ones.
~G
Instant depth. Hopefully, we're moving into an period in which we can offer those packages. I think Wells was a decent enough gamble to be a Nelson Cruz late bloomer. Ruffin and Furbush - interesting how they changed roles. Furbush came in as a starter, Ruffin a reliever. Then we took a flyer on Martinez. Can't really say it was a good trade, but one can see the reason for it, considering where we were as a franchise at that time. Still, you gotta believe the M's believed they were selling Doug high.
I was thinking that Detroit had developed some kind of mind control device...