Game 85, Royals at Mariners
Felix Hernandez vs. Danny Duffy, 3:40pm
Happy Felix Day and Happy Independence Day. I love double holidays.
King Felix and the M’s take on Danny Duffy, the Royals exciting but injury prone starter, a sort of midwestern James Paxton. Duffy first came up back in 2011, and is still looking for his first 200 IP (or 180 IP) season. He came close last year, in a breakout season that saw him post 2.8 fWAR and earn a big 5-year contract extension this off-season. He’s pitched decently this year, but he’s missed over a month with an oblique injury; this’ll be his first start since May 28th.
Duffy’s got good velo for a lefty, reaching 94 pretty routinely, and has lots of spin on his rising fastball, and running change-up. He uses a slider at 84 as his putaway pitch; the curveball that he came up with is now rarely seen. He’s got pretty normal platoon splits, and as such, he’s seen heavily right-handed line-ups. Today figures to be more of the same. Let’s hope the M’s can figure him out a bit more than Ian Kennedy, whose high 91 MPH fastballs seemed to flummox the M’s (though Jarrod Dyson said he had a deceptive delivery).
Andrew Moore overcame some early shakiness to pitch 8 innings in yesterday’s loss. He’s still averaging 91+, and he’s still not walked anyone, but he left a few too many pitches in the heart of the zone. His command’s better than that, and it’s interesting to see that he still got plenty of outs in the heart of the zone, but he’s going to want to stick to the edges as best he can. He gave up a HR on his slider, and seemed to be using his curve more. That hook was supposed to be a work in progress, and his 4th-best pitch, but it’s been the most successful through two games.
Ben Gamel’s now 0 for his last 12. Is he seeing fewer FBs? Eh, kind of – his overall FB% has dropped from about 58% to 56%, so that’s not a huge shift yet. The share of pitches that end a plate appearance is identical, too. It’s predictable/boring, but this is probably just a bit of BABIP luck evening out. The poor guy’s seen his BABIP tumble from .471 waaay down to .432.
1: Segura, SS
2: Valencia, 1B
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Haniger, RF
7: Heredia, CF
8: Ruiz, C
9: Motter, LF
SP: El Rey
Good to see Nellie Cruz back in the line-up.
Casey Lawrence hurled a CG shutout for Tacoma in their big July 3rd game against Albuquerque. Lindsey Caughel went 6 scoreless in Arkansas’ shutout win, but Lawrence’s 9 IP gives him the nod. Tuffy Gosewisch was the hitting star of the day, with a HR and 5 RBIs. Brayan Hernandez and two other AquaSox homered as well, and Greifer Andrade hit 2 2Bs, continuing to show that he needs a new challenge soon.
Can we start by NOT giving up homers in the first inning? Please? Pretty please?
I didn’t realize this was an early game… I figured it would be an evening game, followed by fireworks.
Well, it appears KC provided some fireworks, anyway…