This is a very interesting development, courtesy of Mark Feinsand:
To me, the best thing about Wang’s night was that his sinker wasn’t really very good. In fact, he was having enough trouble with it that he and Jorge Posada decided to stay away from it at times, throwing sliders and four-seam fastballs instead – and getting guys out with those pitches. Earlier in the year, they tried to force the issue with the sinker, figuring it would work itself out. Tonight? A better plan.
“When his sinker isn’t there, he has enough to go to that we can get people out,” Posada said. “The sinker is his pitch, but today he didn’t have it. We can’t just throw sinkers all day if it isn’t there.”
Wang’s sinker looked very good against Atlanta, but it was evident from the outset last night that he did not bring his sharpest stuff to the mound. The fact that he could pitch a solid game without using his sinker too often suggests that he is becoming less of a one trick pony. If that is the case, he may be primed to have a very good second half, as his sinker had looked progressively better over the three starts preceding the one he made last night. An effective CMW will make for a dominant Yankee rotation, and should propel the team to a playoff berth.
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7 Responses to Wang Using All Of His Pitches
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TIQ IQ
That’s exactly what I’ve been arguing they should do. He obviously doesn’t have the ungodly cutter he had before the injury yet and needs to keep guys from sitting on it. At the beginning of the season, he wasn’t throwing the slider at all and guys were hitting his good sinkers for doubles. As soon as guys start respecting the slider and change, his sinker is going to look much better.
Wang won without his sinker last night. That’s a good thing.
What I found most maddening was Joe Morgan analyzing replays, talking about how his sinker wasn’t sinking, and the pitch they were showing was clearly his 4 seam fastball. Wang throws a very straight, hard 4 seamer and Morgan is talking about how ‘its supposed to be sinking and it isn’t’.
Joe Morgan is a HOF player, I would hope he would know the difference between a 2 seamer and a 4 seamer, but I think he was just typically being lazy and/or trying to shoehorn his opinion into a replay where it didn’t fit. I could see screwing that up live, at real speed. But screwing that up on a replay and not correcting it is just inexcusable.
Yeah, that was classic- talking about the lack of rotation on the wrong pitch.
I guess if Miller or Phillips noticed, they couldn’t say anything without embarrassing him. He was SO wrong that they just had to let it pass.
I couldn’t agree with you guys more. I love how they stopped it constantly and said, “Look at the red seams!” as if a baseball doesn’t rotate on the way to the plate and Wang is just throwing it wrong.
LOL, yup. Morgan always seems to get replays wrong.