THE NEW JAYS ROTATION - 棒球

THE NEW JAYS ROTATION

by JONATHAN BERNHARDT Jun. 21, 2013

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/51271554/

Well, it's not working precisely the way we thought it would work, but the
Toronto Blue Jays are finally winning baseball games.

嗯，雖然不是照著該有的劇本在走，但至少藍鳥隊正在贏球了。

After all, R.A. Dickey is probably still broken, as is Josh Johnson, whose
fastball still hasn't come back. The same goes for Brandon Morrow, who
recently suffered another setback with his right forearm injury, J.A. Happ,
the season's first unfortunate victim of a comebacker to the head, and Ricky
Romero, whose career is more or less over for the time being. That leaves
34-year-old Mark Buehrle, the projected fourth starter out of training camp,
the only man left standing from the team's original starting five and long
man, and though he's been better recently, who has a 4.60 ERA on the year.

畢竟，在 Dickey、J.Joshson、Morrow等先發投手都有傷或狀況不好的情況下
季初的先發輪值只剩下原先的四號先發 Mark Buehrle

Good thing the Jays have Chien-Ming Wang and Esmil Rogers holding down the
fort.

感人的是，藍鳥隊現在有王建民和 Esmil Rogers 為我們守下城池。

Wait, what?

等等，他們是什麼挖溝?

Yes, the current Toronto rotation looks something like
Dickey-Buehrle-Rogers-Johnson-Wang, with Rogers a converted reliever who came
to Toronto in the trade that sent Mike Aviles and Yan Gomes to the Cleveland
Indians this offseason and Wang the memorable former Yankee and Nationals
pitcher who reinvented himself again this offseason, showcasing his new, even
more deadball-like approach to pitching for Taiwan in the World Baseball
Classic before bouncing around the minors a bit and ending up in Toronto. The
rotation has been helped considerably by Johnson and Buehrle having good
months, this is true, but in Wang and Rogers' combined six starts in June,
they have put up a 2.29 ERA through 35 1/3 innings pitched -- far better than
the flashier acquisitions from Miami and New York have done at really any
point this season.

別懷疑，現在藍鳥隊的先發輪值看起來就是

Dickey-Buehrle-Rogers-Johnson-王建民

其中，王建民是在今年經典賽證明自己的前洋基、國民隊投手。

雖說 Johnson 和 Buehrle 表現不賴，

但王建民和 Rogers 帶給藍鳥的 35又3分之1局，只有2.29 ERA

遠比藍鳥季前從邁阿密(Johnson)、紐約(Dickey)換來的投手們好的多...

Can they keep it up? Rogers seems to be building steam with every start,
going longer into games, and while he hasn't put up gaudy strikeout numbers
since joining the rotation, he hasn't been walking batters either. He's got a
better shot of sustaining his success than Wang does just because Rogers is
younger, has better stuff at higher velocities, and most importantly has none
of Wang's injury concerns so far. That said, if Wang is really back to
throwing low-nineties with good control and neither his shoulder nor
hamstring explode again, he could really be something for the Jays. Of course
he's had only one good start and one bad start so far, but it's something to
build on, especially for a guy who's going to be at the back end of the
rotation either way.

王、Rogers能繼續保持好表現嗎?

...

這樣說好了，如果王建民真的能夠維持控球、球速能接近 90 mile
並且不要再有舊傷問題，他很有可能真的為藍鳥立下大功。
當然，他現在只有好壞各一的一場先發結果，就此論定似乎太早了些，
更何況他目前只是先發輪值的最後一位而已。


As for Rogers, he'll live or die as a starter on whether or not his sinker
keeps working, and perhaps whether or not he can develop his changeup. The
sinker is the pitch that Rogers is getting the most rave reviews about right
now -- he's now throwing a slightly slower fastball with mean movement down
in the zone to induce bad contact almost as much as his standard heater. We
heard a similar version of this story with another former Rockies pitcher,
Jason Hammel of the Baltimore Orioles, last year. Hammel's newly effective
pitch was a two-seam fastball moving low in the zone, but the general results
were the same. It's undoubtedly a nice pitch and Rogers has had success with
it so far, much more so than with his straight-as-an-arrow four-seamer, but
the movement and effectiveness of a high-contact, low-whiff pitch designed to
induce weak groundballs can come and go, as Hammel has seen this season. Much
more effective for Rogers, if he could manage it, would be finally making his
changeup work.

When Rogers was coming up with the Rockies the lack of even an MLB-quality
show-me change -- a pitch that wasn't very good, but that hitters at least
had to respect and keep in mind -- was the biggest knock on his ability to
stay in the starting rotation as opposed to moving to the bullpen. He still
doesn't throw it very often (only a couple times so far this year with the
Blue Jays, all of them in the past month or so) but it's still eight to nine
miles per hour slower than his sinker. It would provide not only a second
legitimate non-fastball weapon in Rogers' repertoire, which very few starters
can succeed without, but also something that might get swings and misses in
fastball counts.

One other pitcher has contributed in a big way to the recent turnaround, even
though he's not in the starting rotation: Newly-minted fireman Brett Cecil.
Cecil was one of the Blue Jays pitching prospects from the last couple years
who, along with Kyle Drabek and Drew Hutchison, couldn't perform at the major
league level, got hurt there, or both. For the time being at least Cecil has
found a home in the pen, stabilizing a group that was woefully weak coming
into the year and got even weaker when guys like Rogers and Ramon Ortiz had
to fill in as starters. Cecil, a former (and perhaps future) starter, has
pitched 37 innings of 1.46 ERA ball, relying on a devastating
fastball/curveball combo to strike out 42 batters while only walking 10.
Should Johnson or Dickey need more time off, it's difficult to argue too much
against giving a guy with those results and a starter's repertoire another
shot at pitching every five days. With the less gaudy -- but still effective
and impressive -- relief years being put together by Aaron Loup and Steve
Delabar, it's not even as if he's carrying the entire weight of the bullpen
on his shoulders either.

But with things going as they are right now -- the Jays finally back to just
one game under .500, within striking distance of not just the fourth-place
Rays but the entire rest of the AL East -- boat-rocking of any kind might not
be what manager John Gibbons and the Toronto front office want to indulge in
at the moment. After all, forget throwing off the rhythms of the other
pitchers; Adam Lind is hitting .340/.406/.555 this year and Munenori Kawasaki
has four triples, and that's mojo you seriously do not want to mess with.



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