Pitching, pitching and more pitching.

Wednesday March 11, 2009. Jays v Pirates in Dunedin

Lineups: Pittsburgh: Morgan, McCutchen, McLouth, Adama LaRoche, Monro, Andy LaRoche, Ford, Jaramillo, Cruz, and Maholm pitching.
Jays: McDonald, Hill, Lind, Millar, Overbay, Lane, Snider, Barrett, Campbell, and Halladay pitching.


Halladay masterful for his four innings of work, throwing first strike pitches to the first seven that he faced. Pirates get one walk and one hit off Roy today. He has been almost perfect in the three outings that he has pitched so far this spring with an ERA of 0.00.
He was almost matched by Paul Maholm of the Pirates. This was a pitchers game until the sixth and a very quick one at that. Hallady and Maholm were models of speed today.

Maholm gets into trouble with his first two Jays hitters as McDonald reaches and then a great bunt by Hill puts him in scoring position on the first three pitches. But Lind and Millar cannot bring him in ad that was it for the Jays until the sixth

Adam LaRoche puts the Pirates ahead in the top of the sixth and Jays reply with two in the bottom Hills double, Lind’s single and Millar combine for the two runs.
The score remained like that until the top of the ninth. However Monro connects off Bobby Ray and ties it up. 2-2 and stays like that until the bottom of the eleventh inning when the games is called by mutual consent of both managers. Spring training extra inning games are not the norm. Game was flying along under two hours for the first eight innings

Jays pitchers,
Halladay four innings, four strike outs but seven ground balls, most of them to Hill.
BJ Ryan one inning a little shaky, walking the first hitter on four pitches but survived without damage.
Perez in the sixth giving up the run
Hayhurst Beam, and Martin held Pirates.
Ray wants to forget this outing had two innings three walks and the Monro HR but that was more than enough.

Jays start Johnny Mc. at leadoff today… worked in the first inning but am not sure about a permanent lineup. Cito has tried Inglett, Thigpen, Johnny Mc and Scutaro at laedoff. My bet will be Scutaro.. There is no place for Inglett or Thigpen inthe starting lineup. Johnny Mc could not get his bunt down today and his hitting is still awful. It will be an interesting decision for Cito in a couple of weeks.
Cito likes Hill batting number two and he has certainly shown that he can get on base. Of course we have not seen Alex or Vernon yet who would presumably be three and four.
Jason Lane boxscore today says hitless but he connected well on all three hits all into the outfield and with a wind like last week could have had a HR. but today wind was non existent at 3mph.

Interesting piece in the St. Petersburg Times today from the Rays.
Discussing Price and why they are sending him to AAA to start the season at least. Evidently according to this article Rays front office did some research several years ago and determined that young pitchers who exceeded their previous year’s output by more than 20% were more susceptible to injury.
This is evidently why Rays are so careful with their young pitchers and also not overdoing their rotation in the spring in the first few weeks.

Very interesting and makes a lot of sense in context of the Jays as well.
Both Cito and Gibbons before him had the habit of staying with a hot relief guy, night after night. And they would bring a guy in for just one hitter. The problem is that it is not just a few pitches out on the mound for the outs, it is the nightly warmup which never gives the arm chance for a break.

It would be interesting to test this hypothesis on Jays pitchers over the last five years and especially to those who have had injuries…
Ozzie Jay something for you to research ?