bobrek faints Marlins righty Dan Straily enjoyed perhaps the best season of his career last year, when the then-Red totaled 191 1/3 frames of 3.76 ERA ball with 7.62 K/9 and 3.43 BB/9, and he attributes much of his 2016 success to analytics, writes Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. One of Straily’s friends, a banking analytics specialist who “loves baseball,” helped the 28-year-old determine “which are the best pitches to throw against certain hitters.” Straily also studied one pitcher per division with similar velocity, spin rate and spin angles. “Now going into the game, there’s not a lot of guesswork,” Straily told Jackson. “I have a plan. I had a big change in terms of pitch selection more than anything else. I threw way more changeups last year. Just mixing speeds a lot more; not being predictable.”
Wow... I love the hell out of Feldman and what he did for us the last few years but, WOW, the Reds are in pretty bad shape when hes your opening day starter.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Feldman has been the OD starter for 3 teams: the Rangers/Astros/Reds. How many other guys can say that? How many other guys with his career can say that?
In other former Astro news, Ronald Torreyes is the Yankees starting shortstop with Didi Gregorius out -- he hit a home run today. He was part of Luhnow's "buy a bunch of low probability lotto tickets and see what sticks" strategy (and also part of the "bizarro world Altuve" 5'8" and under minor leaguers strategy). He's only 24, yet has been traded for cash, a PTBNL, or other considerations 4 times already.
You're gonna have to name more than one to satisfy my question of "how many". Unless you're giving up on 1. I was more interested in the 2nd part: mediocre OD starters for multiple teams. Bartolo Colon? But he was really good once. Same with RA Dickey. Floyd Bannister? I got nuthin.