Updated
Thursday, August 16, 2007
AL
Roy Halladay, Sabathia and Erik Bedard all had the kind of starts you expected from these characters. Halladay pitched a complete game against the Angels on Tuesday giving up one earned run and one walk. The alarming stat from his line was the two strikes. Only two from a pitcher who’s posted a 8.44 K/9. Don’t worry about this cause he’s done this before. On April 13th against Detroit Roy struck out 2 in 10 innings.
The most unexpected effort of the week came yesterday from Fausto Carmona. His line W, 8.0IP, 1ER, 2 BB, 10K against the Tigers. The outing is so unlike what we’ve come to expect from the young Indians arm. In April Carmona pitched 26.3 innings and struck out only 9 batters. The 10 against the Tigers was a season high coming in a string of 6 great starts out of his last 7. The only blip out of that run was his previous game against the Yankees on August 10th.
I’ll glace over the Matsuzaka start against the Rays. Evan Dickens said all that needs to be said about the poor outing. Was I the only one who scratched their head when Evan implied that the Red Sox had a pair of rookies who were out performing Matsuzaka? I didn’t come up with Hideki Okajima right away. It was Okajima right?
NL
Out of the 11 starts that were added to the roto stats for NL pitchers only 3 of them were quality starts. If you’re in an NL only weekly or head to head league and started Zambrano and Lilly this week you might as well look towards next week’s games. Both gave up 6 earned runs and Zambrano couldn’t find a weak bat in the Reds lineup. Coincidently, Lilly faced the Reds the next night, lasted 5 innings and giving up 2 HR. On the other side of the diamond Harang picked up the win but gave up 5er in 7IP and gave up 3 HR.
On the flip side Chris Young bounced back from his bad start after returning from the DL. He pitched 6 strong shutout innings against the
Rockies
but the Padres failed to score until he left the game.
My fingers are crossed for Cole Hamels who just took the mound in
Washington
. Cole has given up 25 home runs, only second to Woody Williams in the majors. With the league batting about the same against him as last year his control is much better, posting 1.19 BB/9 and 0.11 WHIP less than his rookie season for the Phillies. Cutting down on the long ball could fetch Hamels the runner up award to Jake Peavy’s Cy Young season.
As for Peavy, who beat those pesky Reds in
Cincinnati
on Sunday, the Cy Young is his to lose.
Luke Veinot
In
Nova Scotia