Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Shea Hey Kids

Well, Wagner managed BS #5 tonight. Well played.

Is Paul Lo Duca having the most quiet .314 season ever? Completely overlooked in the lineup by the big name superstars, but it's night-in, night-out hits by players like him that give a team consistency.

Beltran is unconscious.

Pelfrey is taking longer to develop than I had hoped. A lot of other rookie pitchers have come on a lot stronger this season than him (lester of red sox, liriano, verlander, nolasco, etc.).. I keep hoping that his next outing is the one where he either gets through 7+ innings, or clearly has more K than BB, but guess we'll have to keep waiting for that breakthrough performance.

Nice to see Milledge draw 3 BB tonight, per my earlier post.

4 comments:

Fredo said...

You're going to have a wait a while. Based on Willie's lukewarm post-game comments, it sounds like Pelfrey's headed back to Norfolk.

Fredo said...

Lo Duca has been great. It's too bad he's not 4 years younger. I don't think he can have more than another 1 or two seasons this good, with the amount of punishment his body has absorbed over the past 5-8 years.

dark commenteer said...

Compare Wagner's #'s with those of other top-tier NL closers. Only Tom Gordon and Trevor Hoffman have fewer blown saves (3 and 4 respectively) so it's not like Billy's been sucking up the joint.
Give the dude a break.

SheaHeyKid said...

Actually Billy's save percentage is currently 20th among all MLB closers, not exactly something to write home about!

No question he's an enormous upgrade over (B)Looper, and the best closer we've had since Franco in his prime. That said, he is a little wild, and a little too reliant on one pitch, and as a result by most stats he's only 10th-15th best among closers. To me, he has not yet justified the high salary, but at the end of the day what matters most is how he performs in the playoffs. That was always the problem with Benitez - unbelievable numbers in the regular season when he had no pressure. But the minute the race was tight in September or we were in the playoffs, he buckled. Hopefully Wagner becomes even more dominant in those situations, in which case he is well worth the $$.