~~~And I know you’re at the ready with the “it’s the Pirates B-team” excuse- but that doesn’t explain why established professional hitters such as:

Jack Wilson
Jason Bay
Adam LaRoche
Ryan Doumit~~~

Career RCAA:

Jack Wilson -130
Jason Bay +121
Adam LaRoche +21
Ryan Doumit -8

And, Bay’s RCAA last year was -4.

Please, stop with this silly case.

I’m pretty confident that Moose will pitch effectively for two or three months, but then, as has been the case for the last several years, he will probably end up on the DL with some type of injury. In past years, that has caused him to lose arm strength, thereby resulting in a period of very ineffective pitching as he tries to rebuild it. This year it may not matter as much since Joba will likely be put in the rotation by mid-season. I can see Moose shifted to long relief at that point, or perhaps be a swing man to help reduce the IP of Hughes and/or Kennedy.

Since you say you watched the game, you must have seen his curveball and changeup. They were filthy. And I know you’re at the ready with the “it’s the Pirates B-team” excuse- but that doesn’t explain why established professional hitters such as:

Jack Wilson
Jason Bay
Adam LaRoche
Ryan Doumit

All of them had trouble with Mussina. He’s not going to strike out the world this year, but if his offspeed stuff is solid enough to keep hitters off balance, the velocity of his fastball doesn’t matter as much. Barring injury, Mussina will be a solid 3/4 pitcher who eats innings: 180 IP, 4.60 ERA or so. Which is exactly what the Yankees expect of him.

All he’s got to do is be league average. If he keeps batters off balance with his curve and change, they’ll react to his 85 mph fastball like it’s 90.

Phil Hughes was throwing 89-91 after his leg injury last year, but the hitters were reacting to it like it was 95 because of how he used his other pitches. None of the Hughes haters on message boards, etc. bothered to acknowledge that because they were too worried about what the gun said.

I’ll have to check the book later on Rogers – but, generally, MPH for LHP is not as important.

Update: Rogers didn’t have enough IP to make the leader board in 2007. But, in 2006, it was 85.2 MPH on Rogers average fastball

~~~You really are obsessed with velocity Steve. Its an interesting read, but knowing your obsession, its hard for me to maintain a balanced view on it…~~~

Zack, for RHP, with maybe the exception of Maddux, it matters. You just don’t see RHP throwing under 89 MPH and doing well at the big league level.

I think Steve is absolutely correct. There is no reason that Mussina can’t be league average as a junkballer. He throws several different breaking pitches from different arm angles. If Mussina can change his speeds and give different looks to batters each time through the line up then there is no reason he can’t be a decent back of the rotation starter.

Steve, what was the speed of Kenny Rogers’ fastball last year?

Mussina’s pretty cerebral.

I envision him calling his catcher out to the mound after shaking him off:

“Nope, I won’t throw the fastball here. It would make 78% of my pitches a fastball and everyone knows that’s too much. Regardless of the situation , the next 6 pitches will be slider, slider, change, slider, change, slider. THEN we go back to the fastball.

“And I’ll use that new full windup I haven’t used since Little League because it worked for Byrd.”

Steve, why not also ask him to use HGH as Byrd did to get the whole “BYRD EXPERIENCE”?

In my opinion, you’re over-analyzing everything.

You really are obsessed with velocity Steve. Its an interesting read, but knowing your obsession, its hard for me to maintain a balanced view on it…