Friday, April 04, 2008

Johnny Cueto is my favorite kid pitcher

Tonight was the first night I've seen Cueto pitch (via TiVo). Now, I know almost nothing about pitching. I can analyze stat lines, and I can see where a pitch lands vs. where a catcher's mitt is originally located. But I don't know good movement from bad movement, and can only correctly identify maybe (at best) 60% of pitches thrown by pitch type.

But my goodness, I was getting chills watching him. I don't know if I've ever seen a Reds pitcher miss so many bats. Not just the strikeouts--they had more swinging strikes than I've seen in a long time. I'm sure Doug will do some pitchf/x fun with this game.

Mark Grace and Darren Sutton were worshiping him the entire game. Always fun when the opposing team announcers are in love with your favorite kid pitcher. And yes, he's officially my favorite kid pitcher now. :)


Also, I didn't mention it yesterday, but Keppinger sure looks like a good hitter. I see why people are so entranced with him. It was fun to see him go deep tonight...though his power's still the biggest question I have about him this season. Dunn sure has looked good so far too--seems like he has a lot more confidence than I've seen him have in the past. For whatever that's worth.

On the downside, Griffey hasn't looked real good. Not much solid contact, lots of weak ground balls. Not that he got a whole lot to hit. And Freel once again got himself thrown out on the basepaths, and managed to pop up a bunt in a silly count for bunting. I swear, I think he does something stupid every time I see him play.


I'm just loving watching my Reds on TV this week. Part of it's the long offseason, but even so, I just don't get many chances here in Arizona. I'm really looking forward to living in Pirates country so I can see them more throughout the season.

7 comments:

  1. I think I remember Griffey looking this bad last April, too.

    /checks baseball-reference/

    .254 .380 .390 .770

    Yep, worst month other than September.

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  2. He also had a very mediocre second half.

    Still, I'm not arguing that he won't get better this year. Just saying that he didn't look so great in the first series. -j

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  3. Problem with Griffey is that he's an icon - you can't move him down in the lineup. Miley did that one time, and you woudl have thought a guy knocked the pope's hat off with a snowball.

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  4. Justin, any chance you still have the game on your Tivo and own a DVD burner? I would love to get my hands on a copy of that game since it wasn't on here in Cincinnati (although I was at the game.... like I could miss his debut).

    As for the pitch f/x stuff.... there were some corrections to make and maybe even a few more that we won't know until more data comes in. I was real excited to get into it last night when I got home, but then starting looking at all the data and it wasn't making sense or Cueto was unlike any pitcher in baseball. That issue was fixed, but there is still some question about the speeds. It seems all the pitchers were throwing 2-4 MPH slower than they generally throw. Now the issue is, that could certainly be because it was raining all game, but it could have just been a poor camera operator.

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  5. Yeah, just read your stuff on it--pretty exciting. :) I was just so impressed with his command. He missed now and then, but for the most part he was placing all of his pitches on the black all night. As for speed, I guess the question is which is more likely to be accurate--the TV's radar gun, or pitchf/x. TV had him 93-96 on his fastball all night. I know TV radar guns often seem a bit generous (I remember Verlander, Zumaya and Rodney hitting 98-101 regularly during the playoffs a few years ago...they throw hard, but regularly topping 100 seemed a bit much). But if other pitchers were throwing a bit slow as well, I might be tempted to give everyone a bit of a bump on pitchf/x.

    As for my tivo'd recording...unfortunately, I nuked it after watching it. The wife gets irritated if her programs get bumped out of Tivo's memory in favor of games that I've already seen!
    -j

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  6. Women.... can't live with them, can't live without them.

    The radar gun at the game (may be the same as the gun on TV) had him hitting 96 a few times and 93-95 a bunch.

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  7. Hardball Times has their take on Cueto's f/x data. (Doug gets a mention.)

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