What an odd series. Odd start times, no HD feed, no Matt and Mud, no crowds at the park. The whole series seemed like some kind of minor league affair. Only 15,310 fans were in attendance Sunday afternoon when Jake Peavy shut down the Marlins and the crowd looked even smaller on TV.
I wasn’t able to watch most of the series so not much detail in the notes this time:
Friday night: Maddux pitched well enough to win, Bell was strong in relief but Linebrink coughed up back to back homers to lose the game. Maddux has fallen into a pattern of being hit early and then settling down. An article at Padres.com explains that Maddux has had trouble gauging his movement early and some of his pitches find too much of the plate. Once he figures out where he needs to aim he’s fine.
Saturday night: Another medicore outing from David Wells. An uncharacteristic 3 BB and 1 K in 5.1 innings. I didn’t see this game at all so no insights here. Meredith faltered again but the rest of the bullpen picked both guys up and got the win in extra innings.
Sunday afternoon: Jake Peavy continued his dominant run. This is what we expected from Jake last year. Jake actually had problems getting a first pitch strike throughout the game but his stuff is so good he was able to overcome that. So he threw 7 IP, 1 H, 10 K and 2 BB while having command problems. I think the big difference between this year and last is Jake has his movement back, especially on his slider. Last year his velocity was ok but he couldn’t get the swing and miss for strike three. Now he throws that slider that looks like a strike but ends up two feet off the plate and guys wave at it. Meredith and Hoffman both pitched in with a scoreless inning to give the Padres another series win.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Didi // May 7, 2007 at 12:55 pm
Interesting article on Enhanced Gameday.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/under-the-skin-of-enhanced-gameday/
2 Anthony // May 7, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Thanks Didi, that’s a pretty interesting article. I like how he dismisses variation in mound height because the rule says all mounds need to conform to the specified dimensions. Yeah ok. He does raise an interesting question regarding calibration issues but some of the articles I’ve read say that one of the goals of the system is to gather accurate measurements that can be compared park to park, unlike radar guns which can vary wildly.
3 Daniel // May 8, 2007 at 9:36 am
Good call on the movement of Jake’s slider being a big difference between this year and last, and Jake’s ability to finish guys off
Leave a Comment