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Monday, April 23, 2007

Is Jered Weaver's Rehab Assignment Over Yet? Tigers 9, Angels 5

Jered Weaver pitched about the same strike/ball ratio in this game (39-70, 55%) in his first start of the year (55-95, 58%), only with worse results. I get frankly really sick and tired of hearing, oh, it can't happen to Jered, he's a different player than Jeff, etc. We'll just see about that. Let's see him actually have a good outing this year. So far, that's two in a row. This was an entirely winnable ballgame had the Angels provided themselves with anything like good pitching, but it was lost in the second.

The bullpen pitched more-or-less acceptably, with Chris Bootcheck showing his increasing ability to stick around; he may not be the first guy sent to Salt Lake. That honor that will no doubt fall to the little-used Tommy Murphy, since the Angels broadcast today mentioned that the team will go with a 12-man pitching roster. One reason for that is lingering soreness in Bartolo Colon's right ankle; another is the imminent return of Kelvim Escobar. Oh, great, another pitcher we get to break in in the majors.

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What was Weaver's velocity like tonight? When I saw him in Oakland last week, he was down 4-5 mph from when I saw him last year.
 
88-90 from those watching the game, not nearly at the 93 that he's usually around. There's something wrong still, only the Angels aren't going to spill the beans.
 
If his name was Jered Szaysmeiasi, would you still be comparing him to Jeff Weaver?
 
Still waiting for you to advocate trading him. For a guy who's pretty positive he's gonna turn to crap and stay that way, one would thing you'd be screaming for a trade before everyone else catches on.

Wonder why that is.
 
If his name was Jered Szaysmeiasi, would you still be comparing him to Jeff Weaver?

But it isn't, is it?

Still waiting for you to advocate trading him.

Still waiting for you to admit that he's had excuses for his last four bad-to-awful major league starts.
 
Why would I admit to his excuses? I don't have excuses for them, but for the start against the A's when GMJ misplayed a fly ball that added at least one run to the final tally of a game they weren't going to win anyway. I don't have any excuses for last night's start, but at the same time, I'm not gonna get all bent out of shape about it. Sometimes guys have bad games.

You're the one with the crystal ball, Rob. You're the one who comes out after every rough to tout how you've been right all along. But for some reason, you've never taken the next logical step, and I'm curious why that is.
 
his last four bad-to-awful major league starts

Three earned runs in six innings is called a quality start, not a bad-to-awful one. Bad-to-awful is what you call GMJ's defense in last week's game. Weaver Jr only gave up four hits in that game. Bad-to-awful is not giving up four runs over 8.2 innings in a competitive pennant race game, either (per the Oakland game that straddles the staggered four game window you're cherrypicking to make your point).

There are more obvious conclusions to come to beyond this crackpot Haeckel-eqsue phylogeny where Weaver and Weaver cleave unto some ontogenous node. How about the more obvious hypothesis: Weaver rushed himself to get here and is still lacking the velocity and control necessary for strong performance.
 
Why would I admit to his excuses?

I dunno, because you don't want to be disingenuous?

You're the one with the crystal ball, Rob.

I have always said that it amounts to a guess. But you've certainly been much more positive on him than I have, and much surer. What I want from him is a good sophomore effort, not this crap that I'm seeing. Minus velocity, minus command, he's hittable all day long and twice on Sundays.

Three earned runs in six innings is called a quality start, not a bad-to-awful one.

A nearly 1:1 ball-strike ratio is bad, and he looked bad throughout the Oakland game, up to and including the ball that GMJ misplayed. If Weaver gets a strikeout instead, the GMJ misplay doesn't enter into the conclusion. I want to see him right himself. I'm not sure what the problem is, but this late in the season, he should certainly be doing better than this.
 
How about the more obvious hypothesis: Weaver rushed himself to get here and is still lacking the velocity and control necessary for strong performance.

This I can buy; unfortunately, because Weaver made his rehab starts exclusively with Rancho, they don't have his pitch counts, which would have told us whether he had command back or not. (He ended up striking out seven and walking two, but that may not tell us everything we really need to know; minor leaguers will swing at a lot of pitches major leaguers would lay off of.) His final game was April 11.
 
I agree with Rob that the majors simply aren't the appropriate time/place for a an ailing pitcher to do rehab.

What causes even more hurt-y brain is that Mose and the wild yet strangely effective Saunders have shown better stuff than Weaver so far in the regular season.

Sooo... why not let Weaver pitch in the minors where we currently belongs? What's the problem... pressure from his agent or something?

- Chris
 
Probably goes w/o saying, but the "we" in the first sentence of the last paragraph of my previous post obviously was misspelled and should've read "he." My bad.

- Chris
 

I dunno, because you don't want to be disingenuous?


What the fuck are you talking about? You're calling me a liar because Weaver is supposedly making excuses for poor starts (and by the way, evidence for that, please). Please show me where I've made any excuse for a poor start of his, other than the qualification I gave for the Oakland start. Otherwise, you're lying.

I have always said that it amounts to a guess. But you've certainly been much more positive on him than I have, and much surer.

Considering it's not possible to be any less positive or sure than you've been, that's a pretty low bar. Nobody sways with the breeze more than you, Rob. If not thinking that a rough start or two portends then end of the universe is a sign that I'm positive of his success, well then I guess I'm guilty.

but this late in the season, he should certainly be doing better than this.

You realize it's April right? Ya know, the first month of the season? I would hate to see what you would have written if you'd been blogging in Tim Salmon's heyday. How many times would you have given up on him? Though I'm sure you never would have advocated trading him, because that's how you operate. When things go wrong, you want to be on the cutting edge. You want to be the guy who had it right all along. But when it comes time to putting your money where your mouth is, you won't do it for fear that you'll be wrong and everyone else will be right.

I really like your blog, Rob, and though we've never met personally, I like to think we'd get along, but sometime you can really be infuriating, and I'm not the only one who believes that.
 
Okay, so "disingenuous" was strong, and I apologize for that. But come on, last year it was "it's late in the season, he's never pitched this deep before". Now it's "it's early in the season, he's still working into it." Clearly something's wrong here. Should the Angels have held him back? Should they have given him another rehab start, this time in AAA to make sure he wasn't iffy with his command and/or velocity? I don't know because as I said earlier, we don't have those numbers. But I'm not impressed with what I see, and so far, all I hear from either you or the organization is excuses.
 
Why the either or, Rob? Why can't one be disappointed with his early season performance, and not feel like it's the end of the world at the same time? I don't think anyone has been particularly pleased with his early season outings, but that doesn't mean we're ready to say that his career is on track to mediocrity, something you've been pushing long before these two starts.

This isn't about whether the Angels rushed him back, or whether he rushed himself. That's a legitimate point for debate, though without all the facts, I'm not quite sure it there's much any of us could add to it.

This is about you being the voice of doom and gloom at every bump in the road, at every rough outing. If it's an excuse to say that guys, especially young guys, aren't going to be lights out every time they're on the mound, then I guess I'm guilty of making excuses. Hell, even Pedro had rough starts early in his career. Guys have bad games from time to time. Speaking of Pedro (and note, I'm not saying Weaver is as good, or will ever be as good, as Pedro), in 2003, he finished with a 2.22 ERA. In that season, he had a start in which he gave up 10 runs in 4.1 innings. He had two other starts in which he gave up five runs. It wasn't the end of the world.

What do you expect to hear from the organization? Do you expect them to come out and say "he's really not that good, and will probably never be better than his brother"?
 
All right, Seitz, fine -- I'll bite my tongue from now on. Though the end of May.
 
- If his name was Jered Szaysmeiasi, would you still be comparing him to Jeff Weaver?

But it isn't, is it?


Well ... so? How does brotherly relations affect anything? Are you surprised that Tommie Aaron had less homers than Hank, or Joe Niekro less wins than Phil, or that Ken Brett was a mediocrity while George Brett an all-time great?
 

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