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    • Al Leiter’s Lack Of Command

    Posted by on August 17th, 2005 · Comments (5)

    I was just looking at some of the fine data over at FanGraphs.com.

    Looking at Leiter’s command (K/BB) rates since 2001 shows a steady decline. Al was below average in 2003, even further below in 2004, and has been lower yet in 2005. Given his age, and this data, there is no reason to ever expect Leiter to start showing better command of his his pitches – over the dreadful rate that we’ve seen since he came back to the Yankees.

    For those with little patience, I highly recommend skipping the first two hours of the game tonight.

    Zoboomafoo and Dragon Tales with the kids and then an hour of clicking around, landing on the first hour of Anchorman more often than not, will have to do it for me.

    Anything is better than watching 0-2, 1-2, 2-2, 3-2, ball four, over and over again.

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    Comments on Al Leiter’s Lack Of Command

    1. brad
      August 17th, 2005 | 12:34 pm

      Not only does Leiter’s lack of command and seemingly endless 3-2 counts hurt you on the night he pitches, but as seen last night in Tampa, he’ll hurt you more by forcing Torre to make stupid bullpen decisions; Leiter’s pitch night demands that a club have a healthy, fresh long man in case Leiter makes only makes it through two, or less. To be perfectly honest, and I’m sure many of you will not disagree with me here, Leiter has been very, very fortunate in his last few starts. He has consistently loaded the bases with one or no outs, and been helped out of it by the double play or some other miraculous defensive play. His pitching line includes a strike count of less than 50%, and some of those numbers can be attributed to the almost all too often time the batter swings at ball four for the out. Outiside of the out of body experience he gave the Yanks against Boston, which gave many Yank fans the great idea to write on this blog that he’s going to be great with a change in scenery in NY, he been dreadful at best, and sooner or later Torre will see that Small should be in the rotation – especially if he knows he’s going to end up in there early anyhow on Leiter days.
    2. Josh
      August 17th, 2005 | 2:39 pm

      Stay Classy, Al Leiter.
    3. Raf
      August 17th, 2005 | 3:57 pm

      Well, Aaron Small’s well rested (:
    4. Don
      August 17th, 2005 | 9:41 pm

      Yeah, Aaron came up real Small tonight.

      Get real with this guy, a career nobody.
    5. Raf
      August 18th, 2005 | 1:31 pm

      Get real with this guy, a career nobody.
      =======

      On a pitching staff full of ‘em…

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