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2014 MLB catch-all thread


southsider2k5

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QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 25, 2014 -> 04:34 PM)
Bernie Pleskoff ‏@BerniePleskoff 32m

 

In Fort Myers today, Johann Santana threw in the high 70's and touched 81 in front of scouts from 7 clubs. Also threw his changeup.

 

He's going to Jaime Moyer all these fools!

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QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 26, 2014 -> 11:21 AM)
I read a quote from some scout recently, and he said the scouts would play a game and see if they could guess right on Santana's change 25% of the time. Ridiculous.

That was all you could do too was guess fastball at the plate, because if you tried to hit the changeup, you'd miss. And his control was absolutely phenomenal.

 

Those 3 seasons in Minnesota he had fWARs of 7.5, 7.6, 7.2. He was as unhittable as they come.

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QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 26, 2014 -> 12:57 PM)
As much as everyone used to jack off to the Twins as an organization back then, the Twins return for Johan was a disaster.

 

Humber - 6.10 ERA in 20.2 innings, no starts.

Guerra - has never made it to the bigs and is somehow only 24 and struggling in the Twins' system.

Mulvey - 27.00 ERA in 1.1 IP in 2009

Gomez - went .248/.293/.352/.645 in 290 games before being shipping to Milwaukee and becoming a very valuable player.

 

So they got two years of Gomez's defense in CF with no bat and 22 horrible innings in return for the consensus best pitcher in the game at the time.

 

The crazy thing is that is better than what the Mets got in Santana+contract.

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QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Feb 26, 2014 -> 01:04 PM)
The crazy thing is that is better than what the Mets got in Santana+contract.

 

Definitely worth pointing out. Minnesota got some crap players but a lot of cash savings compared to what they would have had to pay otherwise ... of course they wouldn't have done that, so they should be happy to have gotten anything

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QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 26, 2014 -> 11:13 AM)
If his change up was where it used to be he certainly could. Aside from Rivera's cutter that has to be the best pitch we've seen in baseball in a long time.

 

I actually disagree with this. A huge part of what made his changeup so devastating was the difference between it and his fastball. If he is throwing 79, I just dont think his change would have that much of a effect on the hitter.

 

Moyer threw like 4 different changeups and could spot them whereever he wanted. I suppose if Johan has pinpoint control and can mix up as many pitches as Moyer, he could reinvent himself. I just dont know that he can do that after all of his arm and shoulder issues.

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Difference between fastball and changeup speed isn't nearly as important as whether the changeup appears the same out of hand. Part of this means it can't be very different. For most starters, you want 8.5-9.5 mph separation between fastball and changeup. As it gets slower, hitters notice that it's slower. As it's faster, they of course don't notice because it is too fast but they hit it anyway (but not always).

 

I remember a graph of BAA for Tim Lincecum's changeup by speed differential of previous fastballs. 11mph? .400. 7mph? .400. 8-9mph? .150

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QUOTE (Jake @ Feb 27, 2014 -> 12:56 PM)
Difference between fastball and changeup speed isn't nearly as important as whether the changeup appears the same out of hand. Part of this means it can't be very different. For most starters, you want 8.5-9.5 mph separation between fastball and changeup. As it gets slower, hitters notice that it's slower. As it's faster, they of course don't notice because it is too fast but they hit it anyway (but not always).

 

I remember a graph of BAA for Tim Lincecum's changeup by speed differential of previous fastballs. 11mph? .400. 7mph? .400. 8-9mph? .150

 

Santana's always been around 11 MPH. The problem with hitting him is that the slider was the same speed as you are saying the changeup is supposed to be, and his changeup moved very similarly to slider.

 

During his best years, he was a 91-95 guy with the fastball, an 83-87 guy with the slider, and a 79-84 guy as a changeup. Everything looked the same at all times, but that changeup was unhittable because of how much it threw hitters off and because of how much it moved.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 2, 2014 -> 01:32 PM)
Might have missed it being posted somewhere else, but 20 year old phenom Miguel Sano of the Twins will miss the full season for Tommy John Surgery. He's generally in most top 10 prospect lists for MLB somewhere.

 

Wow. That hurts an organization that is already in big trouble.

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Ian Kinsler unloads on Rangers GM Jon Daniels...

 

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10544839...s-espn-magazine

 

"Daniels is a sleazeball," he says. "He got in good with the owners and straight pushed Ryan out. He thought all the things he should get credit for, Ryan got credit for. It's just ego. Once we went to the World Series, everybody's ego got huge, except for Nolan's."
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This was surprising...

 

I promised my little boy I would take him fishing, so we went to Bass Pro [shops] and we bought us some rods and reels that were combo'd. Trying to cut the wire tie that was holding them together using the knife with my right hand and holding the rod with my left. And when I broke the wire, it struck the knuckle pretty good.

 

It's a bummer. I didn't think it was that crazy bad -- to the point I didn't seek medical attention. That day we wrapped it up and went fishing. I came in here yesterday and realized we needed to have it stitched up and we would have to take some precautionary measures.

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Ken Rosenthal ‏@Ken_Rosenthal 1h

 

Source: Matt Carpenter’s deal with #STLCards, if completed, will be for six years. Two sides “very close.” Talks first reported by @dgoold.

Source: Matt Carpenter’s six-year deal with #STLCards, if completed, will be worth between $50M and $55M.

A six-year deal for Matt Carpenter with #STLCards would cover his final pre-arb year, all three arb years and two free-agent years.

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Stephen Strasburg started two days ago, but I wanted to get this out there. Strasburg has added a slider to his repertoire, to give him another weapon against left-handed batters. He threw the pitch three times in two innings in his Tuesday start, saying "I wanted it to look as much like a fastball as possible, so if I get a little bit of movement, that's all I'm really looking for. I'm not going to dump my other offspeed pitches for it. It's just going to be something to keep them from cheating to the fastball as much."
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