Scott Kazmir must have been some kind deceptive against the Tigers. He threw his fastball, which peaked at 92mph, 74 times and managed to record 15 swinging strikes with it. Sure, the Tigers chased a number of pitches outside of the strike zone, but they also were whiffing on pitches right down the middle.
Let’s think about this for a moment. His fastball wasn’t that fast. He threw it 78% of the time. And the Tigers couldn’t find it. If you include Kazmir’s entire night, the Tigers mustered only a 63% contact rate. For his career Kazmir has a 76% contact rate against and he was at 82% last year. I don’t get it.
Kazmir ultimately fanned 7 Tigers batters and by the end of the night 13 Tigers went down via the strike out.
As for the rest of the game, Rick Porcello was knocked around pretty good. He surrendered 8 hits and didn’t make it out of the 5th inning despite picking up 2 GIDPs. Sometimes Porcello will get singled to death as ground balls find holes. This time shots to the outfield were finding gaps.
- The Tigers certainly had their chances after Kazmir was lifted, and to their credit they chipped away and made it a 1 run game. It’s just tough to plate 6 runs with your last 12 outs.
- Austin Jackson had a rough night as he fanned his first 3 times up and was responsible for 5 of those swinging strikes against Kazmir. He also became the first player since 1952 to strike out in each of his first 13 games. He sure can fly in the outfield though and he finished with a walk and a 10 pitch single.
- Joel Zumaya came up with 2 perfect innings, but it took him 33 pitches to do it. It isn’t an extraordinary amount, but Zumaya doesn’t have an ordinary shoulder.
- Your LOB counter for the night was 10
Kazmir is no joke. The guy can really pitch. I under-estimated him for sure. Hopefully the Tigers play just as tough because we still have to face Jered Weaver and Joe Saunders.
The slide show is cool, billfer.
Way off-topic, but I thought this was really interesting. ESPN asked 5 talent evaluators (I assume that means scouts, but who knows) to re-draft the top 10 picks of the 2006 MLB draft knowing what we know now. It’s premium content so I won’t post the whole thing, but the really interesting part is that they put Scott Sizemore as the 10th pick in that draft. He was originally taken in the 5th round.
Very cool, I hope that means there’s plenty of good days ahead for Sizemore.
“Your LOB counter for the night was 10”
Yeah, it seems like that’s been the real offense-killer so far this year; we’re 2nd in the AL in AVG and OBP, but 2nd to last in HR.
You don’t need HRs to not leave guys on base…but you do need to be able to string together the on-basings. We’ve been every-othering: guy gets on base, guy strikes out, guy gets on base, guy hits into DP, etc. It’s not the same guys each time–one night Maggs hot Miggs cold, the next the opposite–still, I’d suggest even trying to mix the batting order up a bit to try to snap out of this if it weren’t for the extreme unlikelihood of this ever happening.
And it seems like we’ve all seen balls that sounded and looked like HR’s only to be caught on the warning tracks or just missing going over the wall and getting a double instead, or straight at the outfielder.