Hungary Jack wrote:Don't lack of command and home runs allowed essentially go hand in hand?
Well, the walks are also part of the equation. And some of his pitches are nowhere in the vicinity of their targets.
It's a different experience from Mulder last year, but it's still painful.
Mulder was clearly hurt as evidenced by the precipitous decline in velocity. Reyes is a work in progress, but he's not the same guy we saw 2 years ago, which makes me wonder if he's fully healthy.
Phyrkrakr wrote:It looked to me like he had a very similar outing to what happened in Houston, except he confined the damage to only one inning this time out.
He was making good pitches, but getting deep in the count in the first. He had two strikes on a total of six batters in the first inning, but recorded only one strikeout. I'm not good at picking out pitches watching on TV, but his breaking pitches were fooling no one and if it's the change he uses for outs, he was missing badly with it. The Pirates fouled off 12 pitches in the first inning, which could be a sign of his fastball not being enough for strikeouts, or making enough of an adjustment on his change to at least get wood on it. I'd have to watch a replay to tell for sure.
The good news is after a 47 pitch first inning, he settled down a lot. The second inning was only 13 pitches, despite an 8 pitch at bat from Chris Duffy, the third was also 13 pitches (again, a long at bat from LaRoche, 6 pitches) and the fourth was only 9 pitches. His last inning of work, the fifth, was 14 pitches.
It could be that he just was rusty after the long layoff in the first, or some other symptom, but the way that he overcame that rough first inning gives some hope for the future.
Frankly, if the change is working, he has a completely different first inning because then he gets a double play ball or easy pop-up to sneak out of it. It's his "escape pitch", in the Deacon's parlance.
