3and2Fastball

I find Strasburg a fascinating subject. Hugely hyped phenom who has had great success in limited MLB action: Career ERA right now of 2.23 in 117 innings pitched (career ERA+ of 173!) This season in 4 starts he has a 1.08 ERA and 0.920 WHIP .... It would appear that he has fully recovered from his surgery. Many still question his mechanics and whether he can stay healthy.... I'm wondering what all of you knowledgeable folks think about his potential? Do you think he can stay healthy? Do you think he projects as possibly an All-Time great if he can stay healthy?

What a fantastic interview. Thank you for that, I really enjoyed it. As a father of a 9 year old Little Leaguer who is a baseball fanatic, I'm planning on buying that book

I'm just so impressed with Gamel. If he keeps working hard he could end up being a very special player

Why exactly is Manny Parra pitching right now?

Pretty sure he'll be pitching. Estrada should be on a fairly strict pitch count and they don't want to go Johnny Bullpen and wear everyone out. Unless Estrada can go 7 innings with 70 pitches, we'll likely see Wily

I'd like to find more ways to get Kottaras playing time as opposed to trading him

Having said that, I do very much wonder how Babe Ruth or Ted Williams would have looked at the plate vs someone like Randy Johnson. A 6-11 pitcher with a 99 MPH fastball and knee-buckling curve didn't exist in their day. Of course we can also wonder how Albert Pujols would do with 15 hour train rides, no batting gloves and 5 minutes of batting practice (if that) before a game

Using the same logic, because Ruth, Speaker, and DiMaggio, etc would not be able to hit modern pitchers like Halladay and Verlander they are not "all-time greats". You have to judge players by their contemporaries. No quite following you there. Ruth, Speaker, Cobb, etc all faced many pitchers with fastball/curve/changeup combinations. Walter Johnson just wasn't really one of them

very much looking forward to watching this game. Looking forward to seeing how Estrada looks and especially looking forward to seeing Peralta, and I always enjoy it when Go-Go is in the lineup

I very much appreciate all of your responses. This is a fun topic (to me at least) to try to sort through. I remember reading an interesting article about Walter Johnson, in which 2 baseball historians were debating just how great he was. (I wish I could find it online so I could link to it) Essentially one writer was saying that Walter Johnson was the "Babe Ruth of pitching" statistically greater than any other pitcher ever. The other writer was saying that Johnson basically just had one incredible pitch, a 95-100 MPH fastball in an era when the next fastest pitcher was probably throwing 85 MPH (of course there were no radar guns back then so those are estimates) and that there weren't hitters back then who could deal with that fastball. The 2nd writer was saying that if you put Walter Johnson in today's game, that hitters like Braun and Pujols and Fielder etc would rake on a 100 MPH fastball if they knew it was coming and a starting pitcher with just one or 2 pitches in the modern era wouldn't suffice as an "all-time great" certainly not the greatest of all-time. Another thing he pointed out was that after Walter Johnson's injury he wasn't as effective, that he wasn't able to adapt his game to a more finesse game the way that a Greg Maddux was able to in the last 7 years of his career or so Anyways, I thought it was interesting... Johnson's stats from 1920-1927 were not as mind-blowingly great and dominating as they were previous to his injury. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/j/johnswa01.shtml Johnson's career ERA+ of 147 puts him behind Pedro Martinez and Lefty Grove http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/earned_run_avg_plus_career.shtml

By the way, at what point do you bring up Wily Peralta and put him in the bullpen? He has got to be an upgrade over Dillard and Loe at some point. Peralta has a 2.12 ERA and a 0.882 WHIP in his first 3 games Pitching out of the bullpen would be a great way for Peralta to get some MLB experience

Count me in as someone who still very much believes in the potential of Carlos Gomez Interesting idea about bringing up Maldanado and making Kottaras the #1 left-handed bat off the bench. However, if they did that, wouldn't Maldanado need to start once every 7-10 games or so? I mean, you can't just have a guy sit the bench and never get plate appearances. Brooks Conrad is now healthy, by the way, and off to a hot start in Nashville, hitting .444 in his first 5 games. Taylor Green is still struggling in Nashville, hitting "small sample alert* .216 in 51 at-bats I seem to recall some talk about Conrad being capable of being an emergency catcher? Am I wrong about that?

Put it this way: I'm not exactly worried that Ryan Braun is hitting .261 in his first 46 at-bats. Instead, looking at his Large Sample career stats, I know a Hot Streak is imminent

For a particular season, a sample stops being "small" after about 150-200 at bats

I can understand that. The reason I rank Paige so high is that he had a 3.29 ERA and 125 ERA+ in over 700 innings in MLB even though he was a rookie at age 41! The rest is mostly just anecdotal evidence, I recognize that.

Yes, I think he should be in the Hall of Fame. He's was found "Not Guilty" in a Court of Law He was certainly one of the games greatest hitters. While he stopped playing before the inevitable decline that all ballplayers go through and even adjusting for not playing in an integrated league, he still would likely finish around at least a .330 career batting average.

I was doing some more research of LHP's today and I changed my rankings around: 1) Satchell Paige 2) Pedro Martinez 3) Walter Johnson 4) Christy Matthewson 5) Tom Seaver 6) Bob Gibson 7) Mordechi Brown 8) Greg Maddux 9) Bob Feller 10) Lefty Grove 11) Warren Spahn 12) Randy Johnson 13) Cy Young 14) Jim Palmer 15) Sandy Koufax 16) Steve Carlton 17) Grover Alexander 18) Roy Halladay 19) ? 20) ? Koufax' home/away splits were pretty dramatic

Thank you very much for your reply. Mike Mussina had a 3.68 career ERA and a 123 career OPS+ with 0 Cy Youngs Halladay has a career 3.21 ERA and a 139 career ERA+ right now (of course we don't know how a possible decline at the end of his career might effect his numbers) and 2 Cy Youngs. Halladay's career 139 ERA+ ranks him #16 All-Time at the present moment I like your Top 5, Feller is a fascinating one for me to consider because he was arguably the greatest RHP ever before his injury and missed time due to the war. I think you could arguably rank Feller in the top 3 or arguably put him somewhere around 15-20

I think he's a little young to have a steep decline all of a sudden. I tend to trust career stats and he's a career .300 hitter vs RHP. He'll come around. And I'm too scared of Aoki's Johnny Damon arm to want him in CF

I'm wondering who you would consider to be the greatest starting pitchers in Baseball history, and also interested in your thoughts as to just how good Roy Halladay is and whether he will ever be considered a Top 20 pitcher. I think he is, here are my Top 20 (which I must admit my opinion on this stuff changes weekly)...interested in yours ... I didn't include Roger Clemons because of his steroid allegations but feel free to include him 1) Satchell Paige 2) Pedro Martinez 3) Walter Johnson 4) Christy Matthewson 5) Tom Seaver 6) Bob Gibson 7) Mordechi Brown 8) Greg Maddux 9) Bob Feller 10) Randy Johnson 11) Sandy Koufax 12) Lefty Grove 13) Cy Young 14) Jim Palmer 15) Warren Spahn 16) Steve Carlton 17) Grover Alexander 18) Roy Halladay 19) ? 20) ? edited : I accidentally included Mariano Rivera....this is supposed to be about starting pitchers

Roenicke just admitted he's more concerned with the Brewers' hitting than the Pitching & Fielding

I can't really complain about an ump's call today after an Ump blew the call yesterday that gave us the win

wait a minute. Is Tim Dillard actually pitching to Matt Kemp in the 9th inning if a one run ball-game? Seriously?

that was pretty much an incredible play by Weeks blocking the base like that. Yet another example of MLB players doing absolutely amazing things that look pretty simple

why oh why Jerry Hairston?! If only we had overpaid for you, sir....