Sunday, April 24, 2005

15-4.

Well, there's the long-awaited series sweep. Probably should have lost this one, butI don't think there's any reason to argue about a W on the board.
Running short on time because of work, but a few observations:
A. There's always someone different getting it done. Today, it was Pablo Ozuna with a key pinch-hit double in the Bottom of the 8th.
B. Sometimes I wonder if this team's too aggressive on the basepaths. On the same play that drove in the winning run, Aaron Rowand ended up getting thrown out at home. Why risk an unnecessary out on such a close play when you have an opportunity to knock in 2 more runs? I don't think the double was good enough to warrant Rowand, coming from 1st Base, to be waived all the way.
C. El Duque with another outing of living dangerously, giving up 6 walks, but he pitchced pretty well. He probably should have gotten out of Bottom of 5th without giving up the tying run. Having said that, he needs to get his control in order. He can't keep getting away with walking so many batters.
Also, he needs to be more efficient in his pitches. He threw 111 pitches, 61 of them for strikes, in 5 innings. Ozzie had to use Politte, Cotts and Vizcaino for the 2nd day in a row. And Hermanson's unavailable with a bad back - or as far as I heard -.
It's early in the season, sure, but it's important to monitor the relievers' progress, especially the number of innings they're throwing. Even if Buehrle and Garcia pitch 200+ innings for the season (which I think they will, barring injury), bullpen will be taxed significantly if Contreras, Hernandez and Garland can't eat their share of innings.
D. Ozzie went with Takatsu again. Good. Takatsu looked pretty good, for the most part. He fell behind the count a couple times, but he came back and got a strikeout, a ground ball and a easy fly ball to leftfield. That's his 6th save.
Ozzie needs to make sure Takatsu's feeling confident. He's still got some filthy stuff, and his fastball's picking up on velocity. He'll be good. Ozzie needs to just give him the ball when the 9th inning comes and game's on the line.

1 Comments:

At 5:34 PM, Blogger balta said...

If you remember how the season opened last year...you'll know why it was that Mark pitched so many darn innings and why the bullpen struggled so much.

When the season opened, we had basically 3 starting pitchers; Buehrle, Garland, and Loaiza. Schoenweis was in the mix also...but at most that gave us 4, and he got hurt.

For about 2-3 months there until the Sox traded for Garcia and fell out of the race...the Sox were basically trying to use a 4 man rotation, with their fifth starter being Mr. "Off Day." And when we did have to use a fifth starter...that fifth starter 90% of the time basically involved the bullpen pitching 7 innings.

This year, we're not doing that at all, and we even have a backup plan if someone gets hurt (or 2 - McCarthy and Adkins). This alone means at least 1-2 less starts for Buehrle...and it means that the pen can be a lot more rested.

Every starter (except hopefully Mark) is gonna struggle and need to come out after 5-6 innings at some point. But for every time you have a guy comign out early...you're going to have Garland or Contreras blowing people away and pitching 8-9 innings.

Right now we're in a little stretch where 2 or 3 pitchers have needed help, and where Hermanson needed a few days off. In a week, you won't even remember this being a problem.

 

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