• Marc

    Man, does anyone miss arguing over phil’s velocity or is it just me.. at the moment im reading keith law chats from last year just to see how right/wrong he’s been… i’m also becoming mroe and mroe curious as to why teams dont have all their young pitchers strictly pitchout of the stretch… man how boring the offseason is.

    • http://www.riveraveblues.com Mike A.

      Greg Maddux takes all his warmups from the stretch, he says it’s because whenever you need to make a big pitch in a game, you’re pitching from the stretch.

      Howeva, pitching from the stretch puts a bit more strain on the arm, which is why starters don’t pitch out of it exclusively. For relievers it’s fine, since they only throw an inning or two.

      In extreme cases where a young pitcher has really bad mechanics and/or a whacky delivery, teams will have them pitch exclusively out of the stretch to simplify things. That didn’t help Jason Neighborhall though…

  • alex

    every time a big japanese import hits the market, we always hear about he is the best one yet to make the jump. daisuke matsuzaka > kaz ishii > hideki irabu > hideo nomo…..

    every single time, we as a baseball fans fall for the hype. when will we learn?

  • http://www.riveraveblues.com Ben K.

    Westbrook’s got a killer sinker going tonight.

  • Ivan

    I had a feeling that one of you were gonna post something that was going against Matsuzaka.

    I been telling you guys man, Redsox pitching specifically in the rotation is overrated. Outside of Beckett, there staff is not great period. Schilling is old, Matsuzaka has beed subpar for the last month, Wakefield is just a fourth or fifth starter who relies a knuckleball.

    • http://www.riveraveblues.com Mike A.

      But ESPN says they’re great! I don’t understand…my world has turned upside down…

      • ansky

        bravo…thats the comment of the week for me and i hate espn for it.

  • Ivan

    Nevertheless, this Matsuzaka first year pitching in the majors, so I I’ll give him a little break but he has not a had a great year overall and for a month and half (including the postseason) he has been atrocious.

    • http://www.riveraveblues.com Mike A.

      Historically though, Japanese starting pitchers get worse the longer they are in MLB, not better. Look at Ishii, Nomo, Irabu, Yoshii, etc.

      • Yankee Fan in Chicago

        Right Mike, and clearly Francona sees that Dice-BB is best when teams haven’t faced him before, which is why he pitched game 2 vs the Halos who hadn’t faced him yet.

        It seems to me that the key to all these Japanese imports, our boy included, is to make them throw strikes. Dice and Oki never throw the ball near the zone unless absolutely necessary. Once teams see them and work out their tricky delivers they can sit out all the razz-ma-tazz and crush the balls that come into the zone.

        I’m predicting a long season for Dice next year. I’m also hoping teams figure out Beckett and the adjustments he made this season.

  • http://riveraveblues.com Mike A.

    Man, Jensen Lewis is nasty.

  • Marc

    man who could we give up to get joe nathan?

    • yankz

      Joba.

    • http://SportingGurus.com Adam

      Nathan could be entering the exit of his prime. Actually, he should be.

  • Yankee Fan in Chicago

    If the game was at Fenway though the fans would’ve given Dice a standing o.

    (Surprising actually that they cheer the Japanese import at America’s whitest ballpark but boo Drew.)

  • http://yankeesetc.blogspot.com/ Travis G.

    ^ lol. they gave schilling a standing O when his line was: 5 ip, 5 er, 9 h, 0 bb, 2 k, 2 HR. need i say more.

    and mike is right – japanese pitchers tend to do best in their rookie year (you can look it up) probably bc no one’s seen them.

  • Pete C.

    I got so tired hearing the broadcast comments about how Dice-BB has five pitches, an almost infinite number of release points, and how Veritek needs to use his thumb to call pitches cause there is so much to choose from.

    Did them a lot of good, didn’t it? I have a suggestion of what Jason V. can do with his thumb now.

  • Andrew

    He has ‘more than 4 pitches’, oooh! Guess what, Mike Mussina has more than 4 pitches too. Difference is, in his prime, he could control the majority of them in most of his starts.

    You can have a 100 different pitches, but it won’t mean much if you only really have 2 or 3 of them at a time.