Toronto Pitching
The Seattle recap is up below. Sorry for the delay in getting to that. Work and taking care of baby has kept my hands full lately and I was only able to get to the writing portion of my analysis tonight. The notes were there, but the time wasn't.I will have a full piece on the hard luck Toronto start up tomorrow at some point. I've just watched it and put together my notes, but there isn't much time this evening to complete the job. Fear not. This one will be up for you faster than you can say, "Where's the offense fellas?"
posted by Mike Plugh @ 9:39 PM
10 Comments:
They left their offense at home.
Hopefully they score runs for Daisuke when he makes his next start at Fenway.
It's really a shame how Matsuzaka isn't getting "any" run support from the team.
I was watching the game too; that missed strike on Vernon Wells really affected Matsuzaka, not to mention the call on 1st base later on and the missed opportunity for a double play by Lugo.
The other thing I noticed was that Toronto batters would step out of the box just before Matsuzaka wound up. I guess they're trying to mess up his rhythm of the game as well
Daisuke's getting the Pedro treatment so far. They'll start scoring runs for him, but until then it's out of his control. As long as he keeps doing what he's doing (K'ing 10 per and giving up less than 3 per) he's going to win a ton of games.
As a longtime Dodger fan and watcher of Nomo's early years, I remember he was renowned for not getting run support. Writers used to say he mesmerized his own players with his windup. For some reason, the bats went to sleep whenever he pitched. The only game I saw in person was a 1-0 win against the Giants his rookie year- Nomo pitched a one-hitter. That said, the Sox have a much stronger lineup than Nomo had back then, so hopefully things will change soon.
I also watched the game, and I think there's some truth behind the idea of "bats went to sleep whenever he pitched".
As dominating as Dice-K's pitching goes, being a strikeout pitcher who rarely got hits from his opponent, his teammates, the fielders, won't be doing much. That also means they lose their attention throughout the game and won't move enough, no warm up for batting.
As stupid as this sounds, like we WOULD LIKE major players being paid so much to actually not be affected by drowsiness while they field and do nothing, they actually would be affected.
The only thing that will save the day is if the field manager start some pep and get the team together at the crucial moment. It's not easy to manage a team: you need to solve psychological problems like this.
dorasaga,
what u said does make sense. Good example is NYY whenever Chien-Ming Wang pitches, their bats are also very active.
Matsuzaka's got great stuff no doubt about it, personally i think he's worth the money. But with the kind of run support that's been going on, majority of the casual viewers will just look at W-L and the final score and think less of him. Which in my mind do Dice-K no justice.
It might have something to do with Dice-K taking little more time than other MLB pitchers between his pitches.
I read several colums mentioning him being slow.
Being Japanese, I am used to seeing long games (I do not have specific numbers, but am sure the average game time is way longer over here) and Dice-K is relatively a fast-tempo pitcher among the Japanese pitchers.
I am just curious how you peolple feel about it, because if Dice-K is a "slow pitcher", it may be part of the reason why hitters are not being able to give him suport.
In general, batters seem to relax when their ace is on the mound, and it seems to bring low run support. You see good hitting teams bash around their opponents when the botton of the rotation is up, but the bats don't show up when the big guns are hurling. I was at Fenway last Saturday, and the Red Sox were scoring at will on generally decent Angels pitchers. They scored 24 runs in the three games before Daisuke's start, and they give him one lousy run. I'm sure this is an early season issue, but it sucks to think that he's thrown 3 quality starts and is only 1-2. Of course, some baseball analyst will start questioning why Daisuke can't win over here, because it's all about the wins to them.
To myasu:
First of all, I don't see Dice-K's delivery "slow" at all. He's probably faster than average MLB pitchers.
>>I do not have specific numbers, but am sure the average game time is way longer over here
Well, neither do I, but thinking of the end-game rules for both sides of the Paciic, I really doubt that. NPB rules that a season game cannot exceed 12 innings and so many hours (like 3:30? I forgot). While in MLB, games only ends with a lead. A MLB game can go as long as 20, 30 innings and 6 hours if the scores stalmate. Maybe Mike will be able to ask some stathead to provide the game-time average for NPB and MLB season games.
I was reading Bobby Valentine's blog last year, and he talks about how Nomura manager of Rakuten proposed to shorten the games in Japan. Bobby thinks games in both Japan and America had become longer now, and as long as the teams perform and show some touch, most fans don't mind the games longer.
That's true to me. If I would prefer shorter games, I 'll move to Cuba. I heard they only play 1:30~2 hours there, for energy-conservation reasons.
To dorasaga,
Thanks a lot for your comment.
Very interesting observations.
Dice-K is struggling again, against the Yankees now, while I am writing this..., but this time he finally has a lot of support from his teammates.
4 In a row!!!!!
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