There is little in baseball that you can take less meaning out of than someones first appearance in spring training. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going try.
Roy Halladay took the mound yesterday for the first time in Phillies’ red and quickly showed that he is worthy of all the hype surrounding him this off-season.
Halladay threw 24 pitches, 21 for strikes, but didn’t leave a single pitch over the plate. He struck out 3, and allowed only one baserunner, on a error. His velocity and precision were startling for a pitcher’s first outing. His pitches were diving and darting around the strike zone, showing some serious movement.
Yes, it was only a spring training game, but if you watched it, you couldn’t help but think that Halladay was prepared for a World Series game. Hopefully he’ll need to be in October.
On a side note, Kyle Kendrick also looked very good, and I’ll be posting updates of the 2 battles in spring training (5th starter, final bullpen spot(s))
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I also enjoyed hearing the commentary about how Kendrick has been taking advantage of Halladay’s work ethic and trying to emulate it. What a great story that would be if Kendrick “figured it out” this year and became a quality starter.
everything I’ve read about Kendrick is that his work ethic was already good, but it’s improved greatly following Halladay. I’m pulling hard for him to beat out Moyer.
Can you imagine how good this team would be if we had 5 quality starters?
Moyer pitched 3 scoreless innings today in a “B” game. I don’t want him in the rotation, but it wouldn’t shock me if he performed well.
I’m pulling for Kendrick too.
Thing is, I can see Moyer being very motivated for many reasons————to come back from his injury troubles, to show he can still get it done as a starter (not a reliever!) at 47, to hold off Kendrick————and performing well enough that his $6.5mil contract for this year will end up being the deciding factor in his favor.
If that is in fact how it plays out, I hope they keep Moyer on a short leash ( a la Chan Ho Park last year). If Moyer ends up getting knocked around like he did last year, they simply must get him out of there sooner rather than later.
Is Moyer only making $6.5M this season?
Tony (and bski) -
He’s making $8 million.
His base salary is $6.5 but…
OK then. Either way it’s considerably more than Kendrick will make. Couple that with the greater respect Moyer gets as a veteran and I think that, if the race is close, Moyer will get the nod.
My fear is that he will get a little too much respect and be allowed to remain in the rotation longer than he should were he to continue pitching poorly.
Not to get too far ahead on this, but I can envision a scenario where we are solid 1 through 4 in the rotation, we have a lead of a few games in the division, and Charlie gives Moyer a lot of leeway as a result.
100% with you on that concern, bski.
Jon Heyman has an article about Cliff Lee on si.com. Here is what Lee had to say about his pre-trade dealings with the Phils:
“It was kind of strange,” Lee said. “I was willing to negotiate, to work something out. I thought we were in the process of doing that. In the middle of that, I got traded.”
While the Phillies had their sights set on Halladay, Lee’s agent, Darek Braunecker, was beginning a negotiation he hoped would keep Lee in Philadelphia. Along those lines, with Lee enjoying Philly and a year from free agency, Braunecker conceded to Phillies execs that they wouldn’t shoot for a CC Sabathia-type deal, and he didn’t press for an annual salary too far beyond what the Phillies were offering. But with Lee now only one season from free agency, Braunecker did make a case for a deal longer than three years, which he understood might be a question for Phillies people who generally have subscribed to legendary GM Pat Gillick‘s three-year max rule for pitchers, even great ones. Nonetheless, Braunecker said by phone that he still got the impression from the Phillies that they were amenable to such a scenario.
While Amaro was doing his wheeling and dealing, Lee said he assumed he was the only one in negotiation with them. According to Lee and Braunecker, Braunecker received word from Phillies people that they indeed intended to try to sign him, then further word from Phillies people not to believe mounting news reports suggesting Halladay was on the verge of being acquired in a trade that would send Lee 3,000 miles away.
Regardless, at some point Braunecker became convinced the reports were accurate. Yet, he still presented a counteroffer just in case. That counteroffer came just before the initial reports were confirmed to Braunecker and Lee by the Phillies.
“That’s the only thing that bothered me, being misled on the Halladay situation,” Lee said. “But I understand. It’s a business.”
Amaro doesn’t wish to rehash the past. Amaro said, “Cliff Lee is a Mariner. I wish him well and will no longer answer questions about him.”
Please forgive me. My intention is not to keep going over the Lee situation. It’s just that this is the most detailed explanation I have read anywhere (especially from the perspective of Lee and his agent), I found it enlightening, and I thought I’d share it.
(BTW, gotta guess that what Lee and his agent said isn’t too far off the mark, otherwise I’d guess Amaro would want to set the record straight.)
I think Amaro is done talking about Lee.
I would be surprised if we were really that close numbers wise with him.
not a good start for either of the pitchers received for Lee: Aumont and Ramirez. Both had really poor first outings.
At the risk of overloading the switchboard this afternoon (and since we mentioned Kendrick earlier), I just remembered that I wanted to post something from fangraphs.
A few days ago, Rich Dubee talked about Kyle Kendrick being a good situational pitcher (all walks are not equal, and such). Well, fangraphs directly refuted that the next day. Here is the upshot:
There is another metric I devised called Situational Wins (i.e., sum of each individual WPA/LI), and it gives a separate equation for each game situation. In short, the very thing that Happ’s pitching coach is (correctly) bringing up as a shortcoming of FIP is being handled with Situational Wins.
The average walk costs a pitcher about .030 wins. That is, a pitcher gives up a walk, and his team’s chances of winning goes down by 30 points. If they had a .560 chance of winning before the walk, it goes down to .530. This is true on average. But, Happ’s pitching coach is saying that Happ is not the average and that his walks are actually issued more often when it least matters. Is this true of Happ?
David was kind enough to send me the Situational Wins for J.A. Happ’s unintentional walks. Of the 54 walks he issued, their average win value was… .030 wins! That is, his walks were NOT situational. His strikeouts tell a similar story, as the win value of Happ’s strikeouts are similar to those of the average pitcher.
I just realized I got my pitchers crossed. My previous post, and the fangraphs article, is obviously about Happ. I have no idea how I got mixed up and said it was about Kendrick?!? Sorry for the slip up and any confusion that resulted.
Nice game by Tyson Gillies today. I think we are going to really like this young man’s game.
Aumont the other night seemed to draw a more mature response than another time when he broke his hand, upset with the way he pitched.
Nothing dramatic, but here’s a Bryce Harper update if you’re interested.
http://www.lvrj.com/sports/harper-stays-focused-86149592.html