Where Else Can You See Racing Cream Sticks?
July 17, 2009NBA Rumors: Odom, Boozer and Chris Paul?
July 17, 2009With the Cliff Lee trade watch essentially an “advisory system” away from being full go, I felt it would be prudent to discuss the guy who could then be looked at as our “ace” come next season: Fausto Carmona.
Assuming you’ve stopped trembling from reading that, it may be worth noting that he is only 25-years old, and you should also check out what he has been able to do since being sent to rookie ball about a month and a half ago.
With a Motley Crew out in Akron, Carmona took the hill for the Columbus Clippers and carried a shutout into the seventh inning before allowing two runs. Over his 19 total innings with the Clip Show, Carmona has allowed an acceptable run total (3.78 ERA) while fanning 14 batters. The biggest change is in the former 19-game winners walk total of three.
That is as many walks as Carmona allowed in his two-inning outing against the Twins prior to being shipped to Arizona. In 60 innings thus far in 2009, Fausto has walked an alarming 41 batters. The year he won 19 games (looking more and more like an aberration with every pitch), Carmona only walked 61 batters in 215 innings.
There’s no certainty that the trip out west has cured Fausto’s control, but one thing is for certain: If he can’t at least come within spitting distance of his 2007 season going forward, this team isn’t only in trouble for the rest of 2009.
9 Comments
I was actually at the Clippers game last night and Fausto looked pretty good until he gave up a bomb. I noticed the inning in which that happend (7th?) he looked gased. So maybe his stamina and/or work ethic. I hope so because that can be fixed but I hope not cause, well, it’s obviously very lazy.
PS – That picture is hilarious. Not only is Sheff getting his head beat in but Asdrubal looks like a terrified child sitting on Santas lap, whos parent is forcing him to smile.
Desperate people do desperate things, aka Mark Shapiro, Chris Antonetti, and Eric Wedge. Watch as the “stuff” rolls downhill as things progress from here, it’s Caine Mutiny time.
Cliff Lee is GONE come July 31, book it Dano. Shaponetti won’t wait until next year while trying to prove their worth, and their egos to Paulie D.
Fausto is just one of many mechanical messes in this putred player development operation. So why not add another out of shape mechanical mess to the mix like Chris Perez? And your confidence that team Shapetti can “fix” there deliveries?
if i remember correctly, i think cabrera took an elbow to the nose from fausto on accident…
in regards to carmona…i still maintain my feeling as to why he has not had the same success and has floudered with his issue with walks…
in the series against Boston in 07, i remember hearing something about the red sox hitters knew that his sinker was not a strike and would refuse to swing at it…i dont know who said it or what the circumstances were or anything, but i distinctly remember that statement being made and since then, when fausto tries to wrangle that sinker into the strike zone, it gets hammered…and when he gets timid and tries to nibble on the lower half of the zone, its a ball…he really doesnt have a secondary pitch and his fastball is sorta flat at times, so you look for the sinker up in the zone…
if he had some sort of curveball/breaking ball that was on a different plane, but looked similar, he would be ok…but he rarely throws anything other than his sinker…you can talk mechanics, but i sincerely believe the problem is that his sinker, when thrown as a strike, it hittable…when he tries to get batters to chase, they lay off and he walks em..
epic fail on the italics.
Actually, I think Sheffield is the one that got bloodied. Ordonez wrapped up Carmona and accidentally punched Sheffield in the nose while he was in the headlock.
im not saying sheff didnt get it handed to him…what im saying is in the picture above…i think it was taken right after he caught an accidently ‘bow to the nose…
Right on. I didn’t even know Carmona was throwing ‘bows that wildly. I love Cabrera’s intensity in that photo.
I’m not sure I agree with the statement that his slider is not a strike – if you look at his 07 game log you see that the % of “looking strikes” that he threw aren’t that much different than C.C.’s number of “looking strikes” that year.
Here is Fausto’s game log from 07:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.cgi?
n1=carmofa01&t=p&year=2007
Here is C.C’s game log from 07:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/gl.cgi?n1=sabatc.01&t=p&year=2007
But I do think you’re right about that Boston series…pitches that were strikes all year all of the sudden became balls (same with C.C.), and I think that got in to his head and he’s never been the same since.
DK is absolutely right. Look back at that Yankee game in the ALDS where he dominated and see how many of those sinkers were out of the zone. They were devastating pitches because they looked like strikes, but if you knew it was the sinker, it wasn’t going to be in the zone. Carmona needs another pitch.