Nice job by Bauer and the pen tonight. Still need to score more, though!

...............

J.R. wrote:...............

We may never.........

I still love our starting pitching: a core of 4 starters I wouldn't trade for any other team's quartet.

All we need is a baseball team to surround them. We have a real catcher returning in a few days. A real shortstop joining the team whenever management decides he's ready. The real outfielders to join Brantley are still down a couple or more levels in the farm system unfortunately.

You might want to add Marcum to that core of starters. About time they called him up.

This guy is a seasoned, proven starter in the league. If his arm is healthy, turn him loose.

The offense has had games where they score runs in bunches, but overall lack consistency.

Thats 2 in a row...

..............WE WIN!!!

Very pleased with the work Marcum did. Although it is further evidence of the stupidity of giving Chen two starts before him. I suppose the idea of including a lefty was what induced them to use the slowest-tosser in baseball for a couple starts.

They see the trouble our offense has with soft tossing lefties and assumed others would have trouble too.

maybe so.

Next time they want to try a lefty, we have Michael Roth, a much younger guy who came over from the Angels doing very well at Columbus. Don't know how softly he tosses; I can try to look him up.

Here's a 2013 scouting report on Roth and, guess what, he's a "soft tossing lefty"

Fastball – C+. His fastball isn’t necessarily hard, clocking in at 86-89 mph, but he spots it well and offers two different versions. A heavy sinking fastball on righties and cutting fastball against lefties.

Off-speed Pitches – B. He has what I’d call a plus change, uses the same arm speed and delivery as his fastball and he puts it wherever he wants. He also offers a curve/slider, though neither are much more than “show-me” pitches in order to keep the hitter guessing.

Control – B. Roth is a finesse lefty that hovers in and around the strike zone with all of his pitches.

Command – C. This grade changes from pitch to pitch. I saw him spot his change-up wherever he wants in college and kept the majority of his pitches low in the zone. Whenever Roth did miss however, he kept it away from the middle of the plate which is just an example of his intelligence and poise as a pitcher.

Mechanics – B-. Roth alternates between a borderline sidearm delivery on lefties and a three-quarter delivery on righties. While this worked in college it almost never works in the pros. Still his delivery is low impact and offers minimal risk of injury to his back, elbow or shoulder.

Performance – B. This is taking into account his third consecutive sterling performance in the College World Series for South Carolina. There really isn’t much to take away from his performance in Orem other than the fact that he kept hitters off balance more than expected.

Projection – D. With Roth, what you see is what you get and what the Angels have is a soft-tossing lefty with composure. For now, he’ll remain a starter but I fully anticipate Roth transitioning to the bullpen in the high minors and serving as a lefty specialist or Scott Downs type of setup man with his deceptive delivery, moving fastballs and excellent change-up.

Estimated MLB Arrival Date – 2016. [Actually he's had some fairly brief and ineffective stops in Los Angeles in past year or two]

Thats 2 in a row...

And if we win one more ...

VT'er wrote:

Thats 2 in a row...

And if we win one more ...

It will still be a coincidence...

up to 3 now. No stopping us.

Still love the starting pitching. Our starters are No. 1 and No. 3 and No. 8 and No. 8 in strikeouts. Always wished we had a team with strikeout pitchers and now we do.

So was that 4.

Games.

We had the high score of at the end.

In a row? This Week?