Seven Games In September
really good read about the Os/Red Sox last couple of weeks..found this gem though.
Quote:
Matusz pulls a muscle in his lower back and immediately ceases to be a major league pitcher. His fastball loses six miles per hour; his slider stops sliding; his curve stops curving; his changeup, well, it stays exactly the same. When Matusz returns from his lower back injury, everything out of his hand is 86 miles per hour and straight as an arrow. Scouts stare at his game tape and say he looks like a journeyman minor league pitcher.
He was supposed to be the ace, to start Opening Day. Instead, Matusz finishes the season with twelve starts, 49.2 innings pitched, and an ERA of 10.69. Due to the front office's belief that he can work through his problems, he breaks the previous modern record for season ERA by a pitcher with 10 or more starts: 10.64 in 13. That record was set in 2000; it's an impressive body of terrible, terrible work, and the pitcher, a Blue Jay, was sent down and forced to relearn all of his mechanics. The pitching coach who fixed him focused on repetition as almost a drug—repeated delivery and motion everything else following after.
That pitcher is still in the majors; to say that it is unlikely that Matusz will follow his career path understates how good the man in question is at throwing a baseball. But he shows that it's not impossible to come back from a horrific year. Of course, Phillies ace Roy Halladay has a much better nickname.
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lol at Matusz finding his stuff again and pitching like Halladay next year..
10-08-2011, 03:14 PM
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