The Mockingbird

I Hear He Can Dance, Too

Posted in Seriousness by halejon on May 2nd, 2008

Joanna from Hum and Chuck recently opined:

Papelbon hasn’t looked that sharp. Yes, he is getting outs and that’s clearly what counts. But he is getting ridiculous strike calls (one on Rolen was clearly up and in) and isn’t quite as precise as I remember him.

And asked me to investigate…First the movement on his dirty, dirty, splitter. Yeah, it’s still pretty good…

Ugh….8+ inches of drop on a 90 mph pitch. I don’t even understand that. Now for his location:

Splitters diving out of the zone and a lot of fastballs middle/up. I’m not sure if the Jays saw his best control to the corners, but he does tend to pitch up in the zone. Here’s where his location was last season:

As for the umpire calls, he got a few gifts off the outside corners for sure. Rolen’s double came off a pitch that was up and out of the strike zone (probably supposed to be a lot higher- is one mistake an inning enough to get excited about when facing a guy hitters hit under the Mendoza line against?), and Matt Stairs’ single was off probably the best pitch to hit from either night. Unfortunately, some genius turned off the pitch f/x machine for Vernon’s shot that was stabbed by Pedroia…

7 Responses to 'I Hear He Can Dance, Too'

Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'I Hear He Can Dance, Too'.

  1. brent said, on May 2nd, 2008 at 2:57 am

    The Raw Bacon Tracker should now be at 2 homers for Rowand.

  2. brent said, on May 2nd, 2008 at 2:59 am

    I love the pitch f/x breakdowns. My favorite is the one that measures balls and strikes to see what the umps were up to. Thanks^^

  3. Navin Vaswani said, on May 2nd, 2008 at 10:49 am

    i hate papelbon. i want to kick him.

  4. lloyd the ghostrunner said, on May 2nd, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    If Papelbon’s hat featured a T and not a B, he’d be a fucking god to us all. Same with Joba.

  5. halejon said, on May 2nd, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Nahhh, he’d have to wear the whole uniform for me to get on board.

    I would still say he looks like an idiot dancing, though…just with a chuckle instead of a grimace.

  6. halejon said, on May 2nd, 2008 at 2:58 pm

    Thanks, Brent. I’ll get on that. You guys are fast…

    Eventually I’m going to get around to showing exactly how wrong the little strike zone thing is on TV. Man, it’s just terrible. Same thing in last year’s playoffs. I don’t get it. They seem to think the plate is like 6 inches wide.

  7. Joanna said, on May 2nd, 2008 at 6:49 pm

    thanks. I hate him still, but now I have charts to illustrate it.

Leave a Reply