I figure we can keep the thread going in one place. Plus, I wanted to break up the images on the home page a bit.
So you know – as of 6-9 (didn’t pitch tonight), his FIP is 4.96, and his xFIP is 4.29. BABIP of .313 (though is FB velocity is down nearly 1 MPH to 91.4 which explains this in part).
Not what we need, but he’s had some bad luck as of late.
Well, if only Nathan would pitch again we could get something going here.
Nathan gets a thread all to hisself! This harkens back to the Inge Era, when if things were going poorly, we could all rally around making fun of “The Babe” to take our minds off of the clown show on the field.
Has it really come to this? What is there to be said about Uncle Joe (movin’ kind of slow at the junction) Nathan, that can’t be said in the course of a regular game thread – in a couple of word.
I may have to throw out an Inge thread sometime, for old time’s sake.
I really just wanted to see how a different image would look on the home page.
We’re a little low on readers from where we were a few years ago, though I’ll say that our per reader participation rate is as high as I can remember. I’ve got a feeling that the new site coupled with this win streak we’re about to go on combined with Paws as our new closer is going to attract a swarm of new readers.
More happy talk, fewer facts. That should bring them in.
I liked the way the different image here looked. Broke up the monotony. Like the idea of the thread, too, though it might have sounded like I was making fun of the idea.
So, Vince. How did you like Nathan April 12 – May 27? Big chunk of the season there. I think a funnier name for this thread would have been “The Boy Who Cried Valverde.” (Not you, Vince. Just the overall tone of our alarm.)
Very effective during that time. During the first two weeks, when he was getting hammered, the “tired arm” excuse arose. Over his last 5 outings (and 5 of 8 if you go back to May 21) he has also been getting hammered. One wonders if there has been a re-occurrence of said “tired arm”. At this point who knows what is going on? The guy is 39 and could very possibly have a permanently tired arm, or it could be a temporary case of Valverde Disease. Part of what irritates me is the constant refrain from Smokey Jr and pitcher X, that their stuff is really great and blah, blah blah. It sounds like they don’t know what is wrong, so the rationale is there must not be anything wrong.
Ausmus says that there is no way he is considering any change at closer. But as far as I can tell, nobody really questioned him for using Nathan in a non-save situation (which led to him being unavailable for the save situation. The only thing that makes sense is that Ausmus wanted to give him an outing to get things straightened out with a big cushion, and was willing to sacrifice his ability to do that, which hardly shows any confidence.