Dontrelle Willis made his first rehab start for the Toledo Mud Hens. The one thing everybody should be looking for was to see if Willis had regained any modicum of control. I haven’t seen postgame reports or interviews yet, but the box score tells a favorable story.
Willis pitched 4.2 innings and allowed 4 hits and two runs. But the big numbers were 0 walks and 4 strike outs. He threw 72 pitches and 71% of them went for strikes. Encouraging signs to be sure.
My guess is that Willis makes one more start and if the results are similar he would rejoin the Tigers rotation in Kansas City. If you’re wondering what would happen to Armando Galarraga, I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t coincidence that Willis made a start the same night that Galarraga did. Things could get shuffled and maybe someone else in the rotation develops a tired arm, but otherwise Galarraga would be the one heading out.
Yeah, but was he pitching or just grooving them down the center because he knows most minor leaguers can’t touch his stuff?
I don’t know, Jeff M, with as bad as Dontrelle has looked, I think Triple-A hitters could more then just make contact of him.
I guess I was exaggerating a bit, but that was kinda my point. 2 runs on 4 hits in 4 2/3 innings of AAA work is nothing to get excited about.
Though now that I look at the play-by-play, it doesn’t look like they were making solid contact on him and the 4 Ks went to 4 separate players.
http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/milb/stats/stats.jsp?sid=milb&t=g_log&gid=2008_05_02_rocaaa_tolaaa_1
My impression is that plenty of AAA hitters can hit a grooved pitch even if it’s thrown by Verlander. Most .200 major league hitters can hit grooved stuff, and there are enough AAA starters who could hit .200 in the bigs.
Willis suffers setback in rehab assignment
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080504/SPORTS0104/805040321/&imw=Y
Why dont we talk about the other sorry tiger starters last i saw willis had no loses