Sunday, April 3, 2011

The Genius Maker #2

Burnett did a nice job by not hurting himself with walks, but did struggle when out of the stretch. He had a fastball with good life and spotted it pretty well. The big miss was when he allowed his first run on a homer by Austin Jackson. His curve had sharp break and he didn’t hang any. The most interesting part of watching Burnett pitch was that I didn’t see any (possibly one) changeups until the 4th or 5th inning. He was in a little trouble and threw back to back ones to get a lefty out. This is a very important pitch for him because there is a lot of speed differential between his fastball and his curve and this is a little easier on the hitter to adjust. The changeup breaks the rhythm of the hitter off balance. I also am not one of those people that think the changeup can only be used against the opposite of your arm (for righties against lefties). It can be effective against the same side, but it needs to be used at the right time (not that different than most pitches).

Tex with another 3 run bomb! Same thing I mentioned in spring training, ARod is locked in; even his out was a bullet one hopper to 2nd when he waited on a curve. Martin hit his own 3 run bomb which ended up being important.

I still think Jeter will be a little better than last year offensively (kind of silly to back off my prediction after 2 games), but as I mentioned I am shocked they didn’t calm all the movement in his bat and only focused on the stride. Maybe the thought is one thing at a time, but I think the movement on the bat is as much if not more of the issue because he can’t get it to the correct spot in time once he recognizes he wants to swing. The short stride will help, but I think he needs to look at how successful ARod, Swish and Granderson (especially Granderson as he had similar movement in his bat as Jeter) with calming their bat. ARod just rests it on his shoulder now.

Girardi pulled the starters and it made him go to Rivera for the cheapest save you can get; getting one batter out with a 4 run lead and 2 guys on base. Girardi mismanaged the ending, but the error by Nunez (in for Jeter) prolonged the game.

2-0!

1 comment:

  1. Mo is such a great insurance policy. Having Mo available allowed Girardi to give Ayala 2 innings, to leave Logan in against righties and to pull ARod and Jeter. It's too bad Mo had to be used, but it was good that "real" relief pitchers only had to pitch 2 innings. That leaves Joba, Soriano and Colon totally rested

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