Hopefully Ortiz gets a 1st inning shot with runners on. Buch should not need much against the WS. If they are an impatient team generally, they should really tie themselves in knots against Buch the way he has been pitching.......strikes in ugly places for the hitters.
Now that I look at it, I guess Salty's OBP for last year started low and stayed there. First half, .289.....second half fell to .286, his final OBP for the year. So at least last year, he may never have even reached .300
You would almost expect a catcher to be a BB, heat seeking missile or at least trying to be.....really trying to "work the walk".
Don't really expect Salty to pull a Kelly Shoppach and dive into advancing curve balls to get to 1st base but would like to see Salty at least try to work the walk more often. I guess we can say that at a .346 OBP so far this year, he has improved on last year's number. But historically he always seems to slip below .300 for a full season. I guess we will see.
I don't know if they use exactly the same data and I do not even look at game day. But if you remember the 4/24 Oakland Boards game thread we had a similar discussion and you had gone to the game day date and reported that game day had that pitch as middle in.
When you look at the pitchfx date for the same pitch, they clearly have the same pitch off the plate inside. Maybe they are not using the same exact system or the same date into the system.
You do have to wait often as much as a full day for the pitchfx data.
That was hanger though, not a rising FB. Rising FB and I would agree with you. Hanging breaking ball in the middle of the plate about in inch high...WMB should have crushed that.
And
One inch of break more on that pitch...and we would be screaming bloody murder if Will left his bat on his shoulders.
I would have preferred the BB in retrospect but I can rationalize Will not letting that pitch go by in that situation.
It would have been a shame to have seen Felix pitch what I really do think were his best four consecutive innings and then come out and get clobbered in the seventh. He was faltering. Deserved to come out on a positive note. The way he was going, Farrell would not have given him more than a baserunner in the 7th anyway.
Kinda' hot and cold for Felix tonight...Super for the first four...maybe best four consecutive innings of his year so far...Last two innings....Super lucky.
Wells may in fact think this is his last chance and might also be invigorated by the idea of turning it around as a Yankee. Overbay and Hafner lovin' that short porch in that fraud of a ML ballpark.
He was hanging his secondary pitches as well that inning. If he is going to try to pitch up there he will need to ask Salty to borrow his catcher's gear to keep from getting killed by a liner coming back at him.
I would love it if broadcast crews just pulled back and gave us a pre-bat look at the shifting fielders as the hitter was coming up to bat. They really don't do anything with the time other than give us a shot of the hitter taking practice swings.
I would love to see a quick view of the fielders moving as the hitter is coming to the plate. We would miss the pitch by pitch movement but we would still see where they started with the count 0-0.