Friar Watch

Chris Young: Young just didn’t have it tonight. He wasn’t able to locate his fastball and his curve isn’t developed enough to bail him out when that happens.

Here’s a chart of his fastballs tonight.
White Triangles = ball
Red Circles = foul
Yellow Circle = Hit in play
Red Triangle = Called Strike

A lot of high fastballs but I don’t think that’s a bad thing in itself, a lot of Young’s success comes from weak fly balls and missed swings up out of the zone. It looks like his high fastballs were so far out of the zone that Dodger hitters were able to lay off it and hammer the fastballs in the heart of the plate.

A couple of things that don’t show up on the graph: Only two missed swings on fastballs. CY sometimes has problems with hitters fouling off the fastball and not being able to finish the deal. When he’s really on you’ll see him blowing away hitters with that 91 mph high fastball. The other thing I noticed is he threw 8 curves, 4 balls, 2 called strikes, 1 foul and 1 in play for an out. CY’s command of his curve ball is always inconsistent but when he gets it over it’s usually effective. But if you can’t command your best pitch it has to be hard to rely more on your second best pitch.

Cameron, Brocail, Linebrink: To be honest I didn’t pay too much attention, ESPN’s constant interviews and stories drove me to distraction. Cameron continued to impress, 3 scoreless innings with 3 strikeouts. As I’ve said before, Brocail always seems like he’s on the verge of getting shelled and he was cuffed around a little tonight. Linebrink had his first bad outing, giving up 3 earned runs.

It looks like last year’s domination of LA isn’t going to carry over to this season. On the bright side, Jason Schmidt and Juan Pierre looked terrible. That’s like $90 million down the toilet for the Bums.

Gameday Data