While C.C. Sabathia probably couldn’t throw a QS against a middle school team right now, teammate Cliff Lee is almost unhittable. Lee threw 8 innings of 2-hit ball, while striking out 8 and allowing just 1 BB in the Indians shutout win over Minnesota last night. Lee lowered his ERA to a ludicrous .40 and is off to the best start of his career. Manager Eric Wedge said that Lee isn’t just controlling his fastball; he is “commanding it.” Lee’s command of his fastball certainly has been the key to his success as he has thrown it more than 75% of the time in his first three starts. Lee is reminding us of his 18-win season in 2005 when he posted a respectable 3.79 ERA and 1.22 WHIP. The 30-year old pitcher still has good years left in him and if he stays healthy he could return to his 2005 form. This is the reason why I’m not sure what I would do with Lee. You could take a chance and commit to keeping him for a full year, you could sell high on him right now, or you could ride him until he hits a bump in the road and still most likely get pretty good value. My instinct leans toward riding him for a bit and seeing what happens.
David Ortiz finally broke out of his horrendous April slump and did it in grand fashion. Ortiz slammed one out of Fenway with the bases chucked in the 4th inning last night and added a run-scoring single late in the game to finish with 5 RBI on two hits. The early concern for Ortiz has obviously been his surgically repaired knee but Papi insists that hasn’t been the problem. It didn’t look like it was an issue Friday night when he hit his second HR of the year. Another good sign that strongly suggest Ortiz should be heating up in the coming days is that he didn’t strike out in his 5 plate appearances and one of his outs was a hard line drive to left field. Ortiz has said that the pain in his knee has been minimal and I would trust his word for now. I have been sitting Big Papi so far this season but after losing a HR and 5 RBI to my lineup last night you can bet I’m inserting him back in the lineup, and you should too.
It has been an atypical start to 2008 for Angels’ star Vlad Guerrero. Guerrero has 6 multi-hit games this year with 12 RBI and 8 runs scored, yet he’s only hitting .269 and has just 2 homeruns. The problem is simple yet very unfamiliar to Guerrero – his BB/K rate is a terrible .38 as opposed to his career average of .83 while his Ct% is at 80%, almost 8 points under his career average. We’re used to seeing Guerrero swing at everything and hit everything but for right now he’s swinging and whiffing far more often than normal. I wouldn’t expect this trend to continue for Vladdy, he’s been an excellent hitter his entire career and there’s no reason he should slow down now. I do expect his power numbers to stay consistently under 30 HR until he retires as he is reaching the downturn of his prime, but Vlad is still undoubtedly a .300+ hitter.
Someone finally figured out Brian Bannister, as well as the rest of the Royals’ pitching for that matter, and it was Oakland on Friday night as they lit KC up for 13 runs. Bannister had his first shaky outing of the year, lasting just 5 innings and surrendering 5 ER on 9 H. Bannister gave up just 1 BB but also struck out only 1. Bannister pitched well through the first 5 innings, giving up 1 ER on 5 H but he fell apart at the start of the 6th when he allowed three consecutive singles and a 2-run double. Outings like this will not be common for Bannister this season as he worked relentlessly on pinpointing his control in the offseason and has very solid stuff. Bannister is also one of the only major leaguers to embrace sabermetrics as a philosophy on how to play the game, which is the biggest reason why he worked on his control more often than anything before this season kicked off. You can count on him to bounce back quickly.
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