No Pepper

by Tommy Bennett on Dec 7, 2009 3:18 PM EST

Sam Page at Amazin' Avenue tells the story of the year he attended the Winter Meetings. Don't wait until you are sick of reading rumors to read this and you won't be sorry.

Tommy Rancel continues his excellent interview series, and he sits down with Rays' Coordinator of Baseball Operations and Baseball Prospectus alum James Click. Read this interview.

Bloomberg L.P. enters the baseball statistics market. Is this a sign of market saturation? Is the market for statistical analysis growing or is this the sign the bubble may be popping?

True Blue LA looks back at the Mike Marshall (the pitcher and mechanics guru) for Willie Davis trade. Eric Stephen manages to tell the story almost entirely with baseball cards, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you that that is awesome.

MLB Notebook's Jonathan Etkowicz likes Chris Tillman more than Brian Matusz, but sees both as integral parts of the future of starting pitching in B'more. Who do you like more?

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I like Matusz

Tillman pitches far up in the zone, with very little sink on the fastball. He throws hard enough that he gets a lot of swinging strikes with those pitches, but he’ll still allow a lot of home runs. In order to be successfulI with that approach, he needs to be commanding his curveball well. It has a really big hump, so he won’t be getting a lot of O-Swings; however, in the strike zone it’s deadly.

However, right now, he’s not throwing the curve for strikes (50% balls compared to 40% league average for a righty) and subsequently not getting swinging strikes with it (7.5% compared to 11% for the average righty). He needs to be able to control the curve ball to be successful.

Matusz, on the other hand, has a much safer approach. He also has a very straight fastball and is a flyball pitcher, but has much better control of his offspeed pitches. His slider’s been amazing this year (16% swinging strikes and 28% balls, compared to 13% and 37% for the average).

So Tillman maybe has better stuff (and that’s definitely debatable); however, Matusz has much better command right now and is a better pitcher now and going forward I think.

by vivaelpujols on Dec 7, 2009 4:27 PM EST reply actions