Friar Watch

Another day, another Milton Bradley clutch home run, complete with taunting the crowd. As I said in the Ducksnorts comments, Bud Black would be well advised to give Milton the day off tomorrow. He’s a prime candidate for retaliation. I say keep him on the bench and use him as a pinch hitter if needed. The last thing we need is The Regulator getting suspended for charging the mound or getting injured.

Then again, there may be no retaliation. Doug Brocail did a little regulating of his own when he drilled Carlos Ruiz in the thigh but the Phillies didn’t back their guy at all. No one came onto the field, other than a token argument from Charlie Manuel. I guess they all knew he had it coming.

Trevor Hoffman has had some rough outings lately and once again there’s talk that he may be done. I agree that his location has been off lately but he does seem to go through these stretches and the nature of his role and his marginal stuff always makes it seem like the end of the world. Lets take a look at tonight’s outing:

Circles are fastballs, triangles are change ups.
Red = contact was made
Green = Ball
Yellow= Called Strike
White = Swinging Strike

The first at bat, to Jimmy Rollins, was awful. Trevor missed up in the zone with the first two pitches but Rollins let them go for called strikes. He elevated a change up for a foul, then elevated a fastball that Rollins slammed for a double. 4 pitches, any of which could have gone for extra bases.

The next at bat to Iguchi was a little better but Trevor missed badly on the first pitch. As we’ve seen many times before, Trevor will usually try to get a first pitch strike with the fastball low and away. When Trevor gets the first strike batters are hitting .161 off him. When he doesn’t, they’re hitting .302. The count went to 3-2, Trevor grooved an 85mph fastball right down the middle, Iguchi hit what everyone thought was a homerun off the bat but somehow it stayed in the yard. Trevor dodged a bullet on that one.

He dodged another bullet when Chris Coste (who?) flied out on the first pitch.

The Ryan Howard at bat wasn’t as bad as the others, he actually got Howard to swing at a ball off the plate but Blum was playing so deep on the switch that he couldn’t make the throw in time. Run scored.

Trevor finally made a good first pitch against Rowand, fastball low and away. He didn’t fool around from there, throwing two nice change ups in a row to get Rowand for the final out.

So has Trevor lost it? Well he hasn’t lost any velocity, his fastball and change up are both right around the same speed as they were earlier in the year. He’s just not locating well. He’s gone through these stretches in the past and has always worked out of it. I think he’ll be ok but if this continues much longer we might have a real problem.