Friar Watch

Justin Germano: Germano has been dominating in AAA this year so he gets the call up to fill in for the injured Clay Hensley. It looks like Germano features two pitches: An above average overhand curve and a below average fastball. First let’s take a look at Germano’s average velocity:

With a fastball that tops out at 88mph out of the hand and a curve that varies between 66 and 74 mph Germano isn’t going to blow anyone away. I was going to say he’s unlikely to be a successful major league pitcher with that kind of repertoire but then I remembered it’s basically the same thing Barry Zito relies on. I’ll look for some Enhanced Gameday data for Zito and run some kind of comparison later this week.

Since the curve is Germano’s bread an butter, let’s see what he does with it:

Interesting how the pitches are all on a diagonal track. The pitches that are up and in to a righty look like hanging curveballs, the low and away variety look like pitches a hitter might chase.

Germano did a great job today and really should have won the game. Unfortunately the Padres bullpen wasn’t up to the task of bailing out the offense yet again.

Doug Brocail: Nice 1-2-3 inning for Brocail. In retrospect it might have been a good idea to let him work two innings but hindsight is always 20/20.

Heath Bell: The headline at SignOnSanDiego says “Bell finally falters” but you can’t expect the bullpen to be perfect every time. He gave up an infield single, a fielder’s choice grounder, a hard hit triple, and intentional walk and a hard hit double. Not a great outing but if the offense could score some runs they wouldn’t be in a position where that’s going to lose the game. The Padre offense right now has too many inconsistent and just plain non-productive spots. The low scoring games put a lot of pressure on the staff as a whole and especially on the bullpen.

Kevin Cameron: K Cam only had to throw 3 pitches to get out of the 8th. Adrian Gonzalez made a nice play on a grounder, stepping on first and throwing home to Bard who chased down the runner coming in from third for the final out.