Back on March 13th, I wrote:

I would suggest, this season, for Mussina to be effective, Moose should only throw his “fastball” about 45% of the time. And, he should feature that 76 MPH breaking pitch about 25% of the time. For those who don’t want to do the math, that leaves 30% of the time for Moose to throw “something else.” At times, Mussina has featured a slider and a two-seam fastball that acts like a change-up with some sink. While the slider and the change were never main weapons for Moose, he may need to call on them more often now – to fill in that “30%.”

Let’s take a look at what Mike Mussina threw in his great start last night:

Fastball	 	9.8%
Curve		35.4%
Splitter		12.2%
Change		11.0%
Sinker		12.2%
Slider		11.0%
Unknown		 8.5%

While it’s not dead-on with what I suggested in March, this spread shows that Moose decided (at least for last night) to use his “fastball” (if you could call it that) as just a “show” pitch and to use his curve one-third of the time and his non-curve breaking and/or off-speed pitches close to half of the time. And, it worked.

Based on this, I would suggest that Mussina sticks with this “M.O.” until it stops working. It just might mean a 15-win season for him.