The name of a girl or capital city, but the fastball of a legend...

I think the K’s are also a byproduct of his delivery, which is whippy (is that a word?) and could be hard to pick up on. Still, hitters saw the same delivery all year and didn’t adjust well.

I like teh Bums.

/throws self down stairs

In case you were wondering: Burriss’s freak oblique tweak is kind of a downer, the pitch count horse is little more than mushy goo at this point, and I’ve run out of adjectives for Lincecum.

Like most internet debates, it usually ends with one person changing the other person’s mind.

hat doesn’t make me think less about Bumgarner’s prospect status, though. It makes me rank him higher. I understand that a pitcher needs secondary pitches at the higher levels, but doesn’t this mean that Bumgarner’s fastball is already a plus-plus-plus-fastball from the nth dimension? Consider:

    * He walked 1.33 batters for every nine innings he pitched

I don’t know, fastballs are a lot easier to control than off speed pitches and especially breaking balls. I’m sure that he would have walked a lot more batters if he had used more breaking pitches and/or any off speed pitches.

Mariano Rivera.

I have no idea if Bum’s fastball is a cutter but that’s proof positive that one transcendent pitch can work just fine.

I have to think that Bumgarner’s fastball must be that good. There’s a difference between dominating the SAL and doing it to the degree that MadBum did. And I have to say that I’m mostly encouraged by the reports on his secondary stuff anyway.

fuck the Bum haters.

I think this thread illustrates Grant’s preference to be on top.

I heard an interview on XM a few weeks past with Bill James, and in talking about Clay Bucholz’ struggles this year, Bill said “Clay is having an argument with the league about how often he should throw his fastball, and the league is winning.” But what was interesting to me, was that Buchholz’ problem was throwing his FB too little, not too much. According to James, most starting pitchers with plus fastballs, throw that pitch about 70% of the time, and work off it with their offspeed and breaking stuff only about 30% of the time, whereas Clay was trying to use his FB only about 45% of the time and his breaking stuff 55% of the time (as they used to say, “he’s fallen in love with his curveball”).

It was interesting to me that James studies indicated pitchers with quality FBs should be using it at that an extreme a bulk of the time even at the major league level (though of course they can only do so effectively if can command the pitch around the strike zone).

That’s is quite interesting, although not actually as suprising intially thought. The Fasball is a very important pitch, not necessarily to be a great pitch & blow away people (as Bumgarner has done) but to set up the other pitches.

Without a decent diet of fastballs, off-speed pitches just aren’t as effective. Two examples of pitchers at opposite ends of the spectrum are Zito & Lincecum. The struggles Zito has had with his Fastball, make his Curve much less effective, and conversely, would Lincecum changeup, as good as it is, be as effective without the quality of his fastball.

Another issue is that i’m sure the majority of pitchers have better command of their fastball than their offspeed stuff. Throwing more offspeed pitches means you’re going to throw more balls on average which leads to 2 problems. One is, you’ll simply walk more batters causing yourself to give up more & the other is you’ll get behind in counts leading to the obvious problems associated with that.

Obviously no pitcher is going to be effective by throwing all fastballs & there’s obviously a level which is most effective. It isn’t too suprising though that the ratio is quite high.