A Thread For Starting Pitchers That Are Doing Really Well

so let's say it was alvarez's spot that came up instead of koyle hill's/greg dobbs' -- do you let him bat, or do you decide that the marlins have a better shot of scoring here with a pinch hitter than they do of alvarez pitching another no-hit inning + marlins scoring in the 10th?

alvarez was 9-for-30 this year (113 ops+!), but still.

Without mentioning which game it is exactly, but there's something special going on tonight.

real sad it was broken up.

http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=340402108

Yeah, this is gonna hurt somebody's feelings -- hopefully Garza's.

This is an incredible match up

Ugh, Uecker just did his patented "Get up, get OUT... foul" call. So much for that.

36-degree weather fun to hit in

kudos to 1st mgr w/ hook after 90 pitches

trivia: aaron harang holds the dodger record for most consecutive strikeouts at 9

Funny how a thrilling, potentially historic no hitter can become a boring, ol' low scoring game in the blink of an eye

become? #teamkenny

man this game is so uncool now

i preferred their early stuff, earlier in the game

lester/sale, half of which has been bogaerts'd

nm

this Harang bid is hardly "doing really well"

I just turned this game on. Hope to hell they don't let him go back out after 121 pitches.

...Joe Simpson just said that he saw Fredi give Harang the bad news between innings.

one hit, 12 strikeouts for lester through six; 87 pitches tho

Verlander, no hitter in the 6th.

Not anymore! ha!

Alfredo Simon has been great filling in for Mat Latos for the Reds.

Yu Darvish is doing pretty pretty well

i understand the uproar, but who are you supposed to give that error to

oof

Poor Darvish, second time it happens.

The new Dave Stieb (who got his, eventually).

126 pitches for bullshit

Vin was just talking about this a bit ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPxtOViVoo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkPxtOViVoo

First and third of those Stieb almosts were the toughest--the bad hop over Manny Lee was incredible.

Darvish was towards the upper end of his pitch counts last night, but 126 doesn't seem to be all that unusual. He's had 68 career starts, and in 55 of them he's thrown over 100; 37 have been between 110-130. (His fewest ever is 81...that seems a little unusual, not getting knocked out early even once.)

If he comes up with a sore arm this year, you've earned the right to say "Told you so."

doing it in an 8-0 game for this dumbass trivia is a crime

doing it in an 8-0 game for this dumbass trivia is a crime
--images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius)

a crime against whom though? it's his arm and his career and his trivia. as mentioned above he's got experience throwing above 100 (both in the mlb and in japan) so it's not like this is a totally unique experience for the guy

Always nice to see Dave Stieb's name come up in the news.

Johnny Cueto has been excellent so far this year a bit in the shadow of Fernandez, but really better.

1.43 ERA
0.73 WHIP
.138 BAA

That reds bullpen tho. 6-11 in one run games. That would make me lose my mind.

The ESPN panel blamed Ortiz's hit on the shift:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/47086/yu-darvish-falls-just-short-of-making-history

Freeze the clip at 1:07 to get a good wide shot. I guess playing normally, the second baseman's a few steps back and towards first and would have had it?

welp - Fernandez got knocked around last night by the Padres pretty good... Cueto now stands alone!

poor dave stieb. that dude was an incredible pitcher, though. he was the guy that during his era, he really felt like one of the five best pitchers in the game pretty consistently. he always seemed to be impressive out on the mound. it's funny how diminished his rep is (in large part due to the win/loss record) but he's kinda the poor man's blyleven and he was miles better than jack morris.

I think his reputation's largely been restored the past few years thanks to newer metrics. He's one of a floating group of pitchers who regularly get mentioned as the best pitchers not in the HOF: him, Kevin Brown, Rick Reuschel, David Cone, a few others.

If you want a strange season, look at Stieb's 1985. Division winner, leads the league in ERA, 14-13.

there were a lot of pitchers from this era who were almost all exceptionally good but for a brief period of time, mostly early to mid-'80s, and they're almost all forgotten now except by baseball heads. mario soto, john candelaria, steve rogers, a few others. i think a lot of the dudes who came to prominence in the latter part of the '80s really stole their thunder either through being so much better or just being on bigger teams (gooden, clemens, hershiser, saberhagen, viola, dave stewart, even bob welch with that ridic 27-6 season he had.) stieb and those others were pretty much the best in the game during their time but their time and their results and their teams were not really as thrilling, i guess.

Almost none of the great pitchers from the late-70's and early-80's had long careers (Jack Morris is an exception, of course), for reasons that I don't think are clear. Their reputations have been hurt by some of the really embarrassing Cy Young votes in that time -- Stieb, Tanana, and Reuschel all probably should have won at some point in their careers.

hometown bullshit reversed

http://espn.go.com/dallas/mlb/story/_/id/10931361/major-league-baseball-changes-david-ortiz-play-error-hit-yu-darvish-no-hit-bid

That Josh Beckett fellow

These Phillies broadcasters are saying "no hitter" a lot.

One out to go...

walked hiiiim

I don't know about that one...anyway, way to go.

Yeah that last strike seemed low

ryu