Carl Crawford- TB- Hot- Crawford added 46 points to his batting average with a 4-for-5 effort in which he scored 3 runs, knocked one in, walked and stole a base. The walk is only his second of the season, as opposed to 16 strikeouts. That’s a horrific Batting EYE of .13. On the plus side, his 5 steals so far this season are an indication that whatever slowed him down in the second half last season is not bothering him any more.
Ichiro Suzuki- SEA- Hot- In every season but one, Ichiro’s April batting average has been lower than the one he finished the season with. His inconsistency in his first week back from the DL should not be a major cause of concern. Over the last four games he has alternated between taking the collar and going 2-for-4, as he did last night. Don’t be surprised to see this continue for a bit until Ichiro warms up.
Francisco Liriano- MIN- Cold- Liriano has alternated decent and poor starts this season and yesterday’s nightcap was the turn for a poor one. His main issue has been control. Twice he has walked 4 batters in a game and gotten pounded for 10 hits in a total of 8-2/3 IP. In his other two starts he gave up 1 walk in 13 IP and allowed 11 hits. Liriano will have to consistently find the strike zone to hope to come back to his pre-injury value levels.
Mike Aviles- KC- Cold- Aviles burst on the scene last year with a .325 batting average in 419 ABs for the Royals. It was highly unlikely that he would come near that this year, as he enjoyed a .297 BHIPx, and the odds were against him getting that lucky again. Add in that he has only walked once in 2009, while striking out 13 times and that goes a long way towards explaining Aviles’ current average of .173.
Cliff Lee- CLE- Caution- At 30 years old, Lee is no whippersnapper, but high pitch counts still are not a good thing, and his 122 pitches yesterday put up a warning flag for his next start. In 2008, Lee threw more than 110 pitches 9 times, including the last start of the season. In the 8 subsequent starts following these outings, he had 4 quality starts, and one of those was the minimum 3 ER, 6 IP type. For a pitcher who posted a 2.54 ERA and only had 6 non-quality starts all year, those games show a distinct effect from throwing a lot of pitches.
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