2/23 -- Spring Training

2/19 -- Spring Training

Feb 17 2009 -- Spring Training!

5/27 -- Kennedy vs. BAL's Burres

Howdy, folks. If you missed me the last two games, you can blame a new job. If you didn't... I'm in no way surprised.

I did a little bit of pre-game research to discover the following about Ian Kennedy's outings so far this year:

Date	LF	CF	RF	IP	ER
4-Apr	Matsui	Damon	Abreu	2.1	6
9-Apr	Matsui	Cabrera	Abreu	3	2
14-Apr	Damon	Cabrera	Abreu	6	3
19-Apr	Damon	Cabrera	Matsui	2.1	4
26-Apr	Damon	Cabrera	Duncan	5	3
1-May	Damon	Cabrera	Abreu	4.2	4
15-May	Damon	Cabrera	Duncan	5	5
22-May	Damon	Cabrera	Duncan	6	1

ERA without Cabrera in CF: 23.15 / ERA with Cabrera in CF: 6.12.
ERA with Matsui in OF: 13.50 / ERA without Matsui in OF: 5.40.

Or in other words, good luck, Kennedy. Your stats say you're gonna need it.

5/24 -- Mussina vs. SEA's Silva

Howdy, folks. Unfortunately, my laptop died about a month ago and I still can't get it to connect to the Intarwebz; however, I'm now home for the summer and get to assault your senses from New Jersey with LOLYanks. They won't be as consistent; and I'm thinking of doing more brief articles like the one I did on Mussina's fastball. (Not that anyone looks at the blog proper anyway.)

Away we go!

4/22 -- Wang vs. CWS's Contreras

Mike Mussina's Heater

Mike Mussina's heater: like an angry poodle, it doesn't have much bite, but it's got more bite than you think.

I got into an argument today regarding the Moose's pitching abilities, and his velocity kept coming up. The opposing side assured me that an 85 MPH fastball could not survive in the pitcher-unfriendly American League East. While that makes a lot of sense, there's a great article over at the Hardball Times that assures us good citizens that the velocity of a fastball is overhyped; statistically speaking, from the samples provided, an 86 MPH fastball and a 96 MPH fastball, righty on righty to the outside part of the plate, has no significant difference. Honestly, that kind of blew my mind.

The opposition assured me that this was not an 86 MPH fastball that we were dealing with, but an 80 MPH fastball. (Mussina must be losing velocity quickly if he dropped 5 MPH between his responses.) At any rate, I looked up his PITCHf/x data, and it turns out that Mussina's fastballs are averaging to be 86.36 MPH so far this season. Most people have been saying he's sitting 84-86 -- but he's averaging the high end of that assertion! He hit 87 MPH in the first inning of his last start (the Manny Ramirez Home Run-a-Thon); I didn't get a chance to look much beyond that, but suffice to say averaging at 86 MPH means he's topping over it at least as much as he's pitching below it.

His velocity still isn't great, but it's better than you haters say. Furthermore, when he's not facing the most potent offense in the AL in two consecutive starts, he's done pretty well. After Round #1 against the Sox, he was sporting a 4.15 ERA. Considering the definition of a quality start is 6 IP, 3 ER (4.50 ERA), I'll take that from my alleged fifth starter.

C'mon, folks. The Cy Young Award winner has an ERA at least twice as big as Moose's after he's faced off against Beckett twice and Burnett once.