John Smoltz will throw two innings against live hitters today in Fort Myers. He's still planning on returning early June. "I think the danger in looking forward to things is if you have a setback, then you feel worse."
Julio Lugo played three innings in an extended spring training game yesterday and, thanks to the elastic lineup rules, had five plate appearances. Mark Kotsay had two AB as a DH.
Clay Buchholz says his strained hamstring injury was "a freak type of deal", but I think I found the cause. From the Journal:
He threw 36.2 innings! (Fantastic pitch count, though; less than three per inning.)J.D. Drew, on last night's victory:
These are the types of games we need after the road trip we had. [Tim Wakefield] got us going in that last game and we come home and this is where we expect to do our damage. To have a game like this where we just don't start out that well and then pour it on like we did and pull this out, that's pretty nice.Jason Bay, perhaps caught up in the night's excitement:
I think most guys haven't really soaked it up yet. I think that's a potential season-changing win.
If Buchholz still has to throw the ball to get outs, maybe he needs more time in Pawtucket.
ReplyDeleteI really hope he is good when he comes back. All this drama around him makes me think he is not gonna be good.
ReplyDeleteLester got blown the fuck out buthe has that confidence. HH just doesn't have that.
ReplyDeleteLiving in Virginia, I watched last night's game on MASN, with Jim Palmer doing color. He had an interesting comment right before Penny was taken out. After watching a strike easily 2-3 inches above bottom of the electronic strike zone box, he noted that yes, Penny was wild but was getting some bad calls as a result. And, his catcher wasn't helping by moving the ball down, instead of up, after catching such pitches.
ReplyDelete30+ innings, huh. Guess I was wrong about underworked pitchers.
ReplyDeleteBartman:
ReplyDeleteLooking at the Strike Zone Plot, I count nine pitches in the strike zone that were called balls.