One of the many great things about baseball is that you never know what you might see on a given night. When the Orioles threw LHP Chris Waters to the wolves last night, you wouldn't have expected that their desperation would yield a baseball rarity.Waters made his major league debut, threw 8 innings of 1 hit ball and won the game. Before Waters, you could literally count the number of times that happened on one hand. At least since 1960. Other notables on the list include Bob Milacki and Juan Marichal.
But only Waters did it at so advanced an age. And only Waters was a veteran of 9 minor league seasons. Totally unexpected and utterly wonderful to watch.
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Speaking of unexpected pitching performances, Matt has a great post examining Jeremy Guthrie at Roar from 34.
I took a look at Guthrie before the season and could only find three other pitchers that came out of nowhere and had the success that Guthrie did. Guthrie is the only one of them that improved during his sophomore season.
Not bad for a guy who looked like AAA filler when the Orioles picked him up.
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The biggest drag about this is that Jones misses two months of development against major league pitching. Hopefully, this doesn't slow his ascent to stardom.
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I talked in my last post about the tough August the Orioles had to face but Buck Showalter on Baseball Tonight had a more positive take on it last night. Out of nowhere, Showalter said that the Orioles would have a lot to say about who wins the division and the wild card because they are better than people give them credit for.
So that's a positive spin on the next two months. Let's play spoiler for somebody. Hopefully the Yankees.
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Time for a Grimace of the Day. Jarrod Washburn from over the weekend wishing he was a Yankee:
Thanks for the link, Heath.
ReplyDeleteI like the pre-season post you wrote about Guthrie. I hope the "pretty good pitchers for at least 5 years after their debut" tradition continues with Guthrie.