Friar Watch

This is how it’s supposed to work. Peavy dominates, the new guys swing the bat, Khalil hits a homer (just as I predicted) and everyone got into the act. Well, everyone except Marcus Giles who went 0 for 4 and was the only starter without a hit or a walk.

Jake Peavy was terrific, 7 IP, 3 H, 10 K and 1 BB. After the game he talked about some adjustments he’s made recently:

Peavy said that he’s making more of a conscious effort to change speeds to get more variance between his mid-90s fastball and his off-speed pitches. That idea was reinforced for him last week while he watched Houston’s Roy Oswalt do just that to the Padres.

“I started off the season fastball-slider, and teams, with all the video, make adjustments,” Peavy said. “Guys were sitting hard [on my fastball]. Guys were having better at-bats.”

If that’s true we should be able to see it in the data. First let’s take a look at his start against the Red Sox back in June:

Most of his pitches are between 85 and 95, indicating fastballs and sliders. Now look at what he did today:

He threw a lot more off speed stuff, right from the beginning. A nice secondary effect of that is he was throwing 95 mph right to the end. Josh Bard was behind the plate today, it’ll be interesting to see if Jake has the same pattern with Michael Barrett behind the plate.