Friar Watch

Chris Young: CY bounced back from a poor outing to have his best start of the year. In his last start Young looked very uncomfortable between pitches, he spent a lot of time stepping off the mound to regroup. Tonight he was in a groove early, working quickly and confidently. He had good command for the most part and maintained his velocity through all 8 innings, Gameday had him as high as 93 mph all night long. Unlike last time he had his slider working and threw it to good effect although he still relied mainly on his fastball. By my count he threw 2 curves, 15 sliders and 84 fastballs (3 pitches had no data).

When I looked at Clay Hensley’s last start I noticed he didn’t throw a curveball the first time through the order and speculated that it was a deliberate strategy. Well it looks like CY was following a similar strategy, he only threw two breaking balls the first time through the order:

The first peak is a slider, the second a curve. Pitch 31 marks the first pitch in the second time through the order and you can see he immediately started mixing in sliders.

Trevor Hoffman: No worries here. Another 1-2-3 9th from Trevor, who looked sharp tonight. Rumors of his demise were greatly exaggerated.