1-0 Indians so far. Not sure what the hell happened in the 1st inning, but we fouled up a good scoring chance.
When the hell did Ubaldo get this quirky jerky pitching motion? No wonder he's been sucking it up on my fantasy team. This guy needs to tear it down and go back to the basics. His fastball used to sit at 96-98, now it tops out at 93?
Ubaldo dialed it up to 95 to punch out Lowrie for the first out in the 4th. Maybe I made too much of his motion in my earlier post. I definitely understand all the walks now. That motion looks so uncomfortable and difficult to repeat.
His demise has been somewhat bizarre. He was dominant just two years ago and now he's nothing short of mediocre. Some drop-off in performance was expected given that he was moving from the NL to the AL, but it's not just his ERA and BAA that have taken a hit. It's things that shouldn't change with a move to a different league like his velocity, as you mentioned.
After seeing the value of the #1 pick in the draft with MLB's new slotting system, the Astros look to put themselves back in contention for the top pick.
Don't quote me but from what I recall, there were already signs of the velocity drop-off in the latter half of his 2nd to last season with COL and during the season in which he was traded. I think I read that somewhere. As far as the quirky delivery, he's always had that, even during the first half of 2 seasons ago when he was historically dominant. Command has always been an issue with him, even when he was elite, going back to his days in the minors. Always had an extremely high walk rate. When he was at his best though, he was inducing grounders and breaking bats almost at will. And when his fastball was mid to high 90s, he was able to mask some of his command issues. That isn't the case anymore. If he can't regain that velocity, I don't think he'll ever come close to being an ace again because his mechanical issues just won't be able to be fixed this late in his career.
Getting to the point where you start seeing the true colors of the team and individual players and it's def not pretty. Hitting has been turrible. Barnett let go and Leon Roberts brought up? OKC has been hitting consistently well all year. Getting shut out by KC and CLE is pretty bad.
Dallas Keuchel will be opposed by Jeanmar Gomez. And tomorrow.... J.A. Happ will go up against Derek Lowe at 1:05. This is the 2nd Happ start that I will be witnessing.
I dunno, he's making pretty short work out of us thus far through four (40 pitches, 0 hits, 0 walks, 3 K's).
I'll probably jinx it by saying something, but Keuchel is really cruising. I'd be shocked if he doesn't finish this one off.
