In George We Trust
A(nother) blog about the most storied franchise in sports
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
So much for 162-0
Marco Scutaro has made a habit of winning games with late hits, and last night was no exception. Scott Proctor was all over the place, but in fairness to him, he has things going in life that are much more important than baseball (we all hope everything turns out well, Scott). In a perfect world, Aaron Small would have been in the game at that point.

Moose was very good in my opinion, with the exception of the 2 HRs he gave up (I told you Swisher was mashing). I charted the velocities for both Harden and Mussina throughout the game, so for the sake of having some graphs, here's the data (all velocity readings came from the FSN radar gun):


If the graphs didn't come out to clear I apologize, the purple on the first pitch graphs indicate strikes, the blue is balls (chuckle chuckle). I missed about half-a-dozen pitches for both Moose and Harden, for a variety of reasons (come back from commercials and there's already an 0-1 count, stuff like that). The 4th inning dip in Mussina's average velocity is due to the fact that he had a 5 pitch inning, and threw 4 offspeed pitches. The data is also just a big melting pot of all pitches thrown, so there's no consideration for fastballs and changeups and the such. If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll try to keep track of fastball speed, changeup speed, etc. for tonight's Haren-Wang matchup.

The thing I noticed right away is that you can easily see where Harden's fastball sits and where his offpeed stuff sits, while Moose is a bit more deliberate and does a good job of mixing up pitches. It's no secret Moose has lost about 2 feet from his fastball in recent years, but you can tell he acknowledges it and is trying to make adjustments to get by with what he has (unlike Kevin Brown), confirming what we already know: Mussina is one of the smartest, most intelligent pitchers in the game.

A couple of other things from around the Yankee world:

  • You can give credit to the FSN crew for pointing this out in a pop-up stat window thingee: the Yanks currently have 3 of the top 4 guys with the most hits since the start of the 1996 season (A-Rod, Jeter, Damon - Bernie is 8th, Sheff is 16th).
  • This was the trivia question from the broadcast, and even though it falls into the "who really cares" category, it's worth sharing: Huston Street's 67 appearances last year were the second most all-time by an A's rookie. Who made the most? That would be none other than...Aaron Small (71 in 1997). Who knew?
  • When Rich Harden struck out Sheff, A-Rod, Giambi and Matsui in a row from the 1st to 2nd inning, it could in all seriousness be the last time in baseball history those 4 strike out in order. And Harden didn't just K'em, he blew them away.
  • In non-Yankee news, Prince Fielder has started the season 0-for-9 with 7 K's. Ouch.
  • Anna, you tease.

Here's the recently released roster for Double-A Trenton; notables include JB Cox, Tyler Clippard, TJ Beam and Kevin Howard.

Written at 10:31 AM by Mike A.
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