Watching Sunday’s St. Louis Cardinals road trip-ending loss to the San Francisco Giants seemed a flashback to early in the season – at least when considering the performance of Cards starter Adam Wainwright.
Through his first seven 2009 starts, the 27-year-old was scuffling along with just two quality starts (six or more innings, three or fewer earned runs) and a career-worst 4.35 ERA. His frustration was beginning to mount as it clearly showed in interviews.
Just prior to mid-month, Wainwright discovered a flaw in his delivery and results improved from there. He allowed just one earned run in each of his next three starts, over 23 2/3 innings. That lowered his season ERA to 3.18.
Unfortunately, the old Wainwright seemed to reappear on Sunday. It wasn’t a washout as he kept the walks down (two), a problem earlier, and 64 of his 101 pitches over seven innings were strikes.
However, too many of those strikes were hittable as the Giants collected ten hits. The killing blow was a seventh-inning home run by reserve corner infielder Rich Aurilia. It was the 37-year-old veteran’s first of the season. Not the guy one would have expected to beat you.
“It’s a brain cramp when you look back on it. You don’t know if you’re throwing it for effect or trying to get him out with that pitch. If I’m trying to get him out, that’s not the pitch I want to throw,” Wainwright told the press after the game.
Considering his outing overall, Wainwright made this evaluation.
“Today wasn’t a day where I made a lot of good pitches. I made a lot of mediocre pitches.”
I don’t want to be too hard on Adam as he clearly battled and almost won, but one thing I noticed was that his trademark curve did not seem to be working for him on Sunday. That caused a study recently published by four university educators to come to mind.
While this will seem wonky to some, I was fascinated by an award-winning treatise on the optical illusion of the break of the curveball. The team that won “The Best Visual Illusion of the Year” contest in May was led by a psychology professor from American University named Arthur Shapiro, who calls himself a “vision scientist”.
Check out this site and specifically, the visual demonstration of how the eye’s peripheral vision perceives the curve compared to when looking directly at it. One can even adjust the speed and two other parameters, but the result is the same. From the periphery, the rotating baseball definitely looks to be breaking, but when focusing directly on it, the ball really isn’t.
Does this mean conventional wisdom about what we grew up calling the “yakker”, “Uncle Charlie”, “the bender” or simply “the hook” has to be thrown out the window?
If so, please don’t tell Carlos Beltran!
Maybe Sunday’s defeat can be simply chalked up to those pesky San Francisco hitters keeping their eyes focused on the old baseball with tunnel-like vision.
Or maybe following Carp+Waino, back to back, is just too many similar breaking pitches. SF had some solid technical hitters and both Carp and Waino were throwing scared under the the treat of no run support form their teammates. The curve ball is effective when its thrown as a strike along with the pitch to contact fastballs and sliders. When they are bouncing them, looking for strikeouts, they become less effective. Waino was trying to be aggressive in the 7th so that he might last until we got the lead back. Pitching for the win, not to win. I said this before the season. Starting pitching will be dragged down by a poor offensive team. Regardless of the numbers, these hitters technically suck. Period. Thurstons last at bat tells it all. 2/0 he takes a massive cut, 3/1 tony gives him the take for obvious reasons. 3/2 ,there is no stroke for the hit. No hand the baton to Albert. He tries to splash one. Both Barden and Thurston are now without rolls, both just trying to stay in the show. Tony got tired of watching Rasmus uppercut everything, sat his ass down. Ryan takes a rip at every opportunity, and thats a mystery. What Thurston brought is now gone, Barden too. And this to me seems apparent. If Duncan is a tolerable standard, we are a losing team.
Starting pitching is dragged down by weak hitting. And strong hitting is dragged down by weak pitching. Its the way of the world.
It was interesting in the 5th that TLR chose Duncan to pinch-hit with the bases loaded. He does not have a big bench. Using Duncan then meant he burnt two of his 4 reserves, since he had to send Rasmus into the game to play defense. Apparently TLR felt this was a critical moment and rather than entrust it to Rasmus or Ankiel, he went with Duncan. While the outcome was ugly, TLR went all in.
There was an great deal of lively complaining at the P-D forum. Duncan must be this years Juan Encarnacion, a whipping boy for frustration.
The good news is our brave lads are mad now and back on the warpath, planning to put a hurt on the Redlegs.
I don’t see any focus for anger here. Duncan will be hitting 2nd, he is starting to freak out there. Baker isn’t going to pitch to Albert. Cincinnati is sliding, but we are in trouble with Luddy and Rick. The guessing, the off balance swings. The speculation. If we win, it because Cinci gives it up. Welly is trying to come to grips with his video addiction. Lets see if he has stayed on the wagon.
Skip Schumaker, 2b
Colby Rasmus, cf
Albert Pujols, 1b
Chris Duncan, lf
Rick Ankiel, rf
Jason LaRue, c
Joe Thurston, 3b
Todd Wellemeyer, p
Brendan Ryan, ss
If Albert may have got a pitch, Duncan back to 4th guarantees he won’t. He is followed by Rick???
Why no Ludwick?
Brendan Ryan is 5 for 10 in his last two games. Very nice.
As for the article, that curveball illusion demonstration is wild! I see it but I can’t make sense of it!
TLR is focusing 5 lefty swingers on Volquez.
Johnny Mo calls for a TV report on Glaus. The subliminal message was, They will use the promise of Troy to stave off the DeRosa movement. Ankiel ,Welly or Peniero are all trade bait along with a few Eggs. They will get action on the pitchers. Ankiel represents a no win situation now. I would say by his behavior tonight, pouting over the RF assignment, that he knows it. They won’t get much. Change is good.
Jumbo, Cinnci was a bug on the window coming in here. Colby is so detached, he is our only feeder. He smells their troubles. Duncan strikes out on a hanging breaking ball, wet dream for any hitter.
I’m all for trading off impending free agents. GMs tend to be so focused upon the present season that they’ll give away a fortune in long-term value for a short rental.
Bottom line says they won’t take anything that will cost more than they bail. They will try to make it look like its something for the fans. If the Reds can win tonight, they can sweep with the type of energy I’m seeing from the Birds.
If Boyer keeps giving up runs, he is going to be reassigned.
Good job by Rasmus tonight.
The real issue is incentive and energy Jumbo. Boyer can’t find it . Welly can’t find it. Rasmus is just doing his thing, he is a feeder. He could care less. The big fuss over Albert, Tony’s platooning, Duncan and Ankiel, Ludwick, all clogging up key positions, we have problems. Whats of interest, is this would have been the assumed position of this team in April, had they not got such a fast start. BD/Mo might be right where they figured. They may already have plans from here on out. Should be interesting.
You first have to take care of things within your own control. We need to adjust down to 12 pitchers and elevate someone from Memphis. We will have to wait a few more days, but the someone is probably Tyler Greene.
Jumbo, Tony excepted the out of balance roster from the start. He excepted the promise of no competition for Rasmus becase it meant no threat to Duncan. That dog won’t hunt any longer. They must have balance, and Tony has to stop this bull—- platooning. Ankiel is real close to a breakdown of his own. He knows he is in big trouble. Albert’s left quad will deteriorate even faster now that he twisted his right ankle. You can’t replace Bardens balls that have been seriously kicked. I’m excited to see the solutions.
Westie, its 162 separate games. Each game starts at 0-0. This is not the worst team in baseball history.
Because the rotation was unsettled early with Carp out, because Thompson/Kinney started poorly, and Motte/Perez needed to find their ways, for such reasons TLR wanted an 8 man pen. Also the schedule was tight with games. The 13 man staff is by Tony’s request!
Ryan is hitting pretty well, but not an everyday SS. We are going to need TGreene to split the job and provide some energy and pop. We hoped we could station him at Memphis the rest of the summer, but it does not look possible.
Tony tried going with 3 lefty OFs tonight, but it did not work out. Ludwick is going to be back tomorrow. Rasmus earned a start in CF tomorrow. Dunc and Ank may end up in an uncommon L/L platoon. Let’s go get those rascals tomorrow behind Super Brad!!
O’tay!!!!!!!!!!!
If Ankiel is still hurting, then I hope Mo steps in and puts him on the DL again, none of the old he’s playable nonsense. Rick got his bell rung and we need him to get well. We can bring up Jon Jay to fill-in.
If Pineiro and Lohse are OOC, then up come Walters and Boggs or maybe Hawksworth. We need to use the AAA depth to stay fresh and keep fighting.
I am dubious there will be some easy miracle trade. If it happens, then fine. But until it does, we have to make the best of what we have. Jay could look ok out in left, steal a few bases like TGreene, provide some energy.
It sure is terrible to have a silver slugger from the season before clogging up a key position. Sheesh.
Platooning mediocre players is a proven method.