Padres (5-5) @ Dodgers (4-5)
Jake Peavy vs Brad Penny
7:40 p.m. PT
Channel 4SD
AM 1090, FM 105.7, XM 185
MLB, B-R
Jake dominated the Dodgers last weekend in San Diego. Perhaps more importantly, he seems to have gotten into their heads with Smudgegate. Here’s hoping he can work that to his advantage.
K
Hoffman.
Dong! Dong!! Dong!!!
For one strike, vintage Hoffman.
If he can keep the fastball down, he can still be effective.
I think.
That was an ugly win, but a win none the less. Good game
Nice pitching to Kent. He ripped off a few great changeups and got him swinging.
248: Dude, he gave up two squibbled singles. Nothing was hit hard. He struck out two guys. The problem was his approach against DeWitt and Furcal, where he tried to paint the outside corner instead of challenging them.
Hoffy lowered his ERA … frightening, indeed …
248: After about month or five weeks, that will be a decent enough sample size to use.
Hoffman’s location is off. Not much off but just enough to be a problem for him, since he doesn’t throw hard. His location has to be right on.
Either’s infield hit should have been an out. It was fairly clear on replay.
248: I think it’s 50-50 or better that Hoffman is, indeed, finished as an effective reliever. I’ve had a lot of fun watching him over the years, and I very much hope that he can get it together for at least the remainder of this season.
But the end is coming, if not this year, then next…
#248: I was at the first game that they played Hell’s Bells. I love Trevor the same as I do Tony G. for entertaining me for so many years. But I agree. At some point, a person has to make the decision to hang it up and move on to Cooperstown.
I’ll buy another brick for Trever just as I did for Tony!
248: Agreed. His approach suggests he’s not confident in going right after hitters. Walking DeWitt in that situation is not OK, especially considering he’s 0 for whatever this year against us. Make him hit the ball.
Sorry, that should have been 256: Agreed…
Hoffy isn’t done, but he does need his confidence back
I’m not even saying he’s done, though I think his role as a closer is about at it’s end. I’m not a fan of players being grandfathered into their spots. Then again I’m not sure who on the staff should be closing either, as Bell hasn’t looked himself lately either.
It looks like Hoffman his throwing his slider much, much more this year. Fangraphs says he’s throwing it 15% of the time this year (obviously small sample size, but still indicative of his approach) versus 5% in previous years. Tonight, his strategy was using his slider to get ahead of righties and his fastball to get ahead of lefties, trying to get into a favorable count where he could use his changeup. The slider approach certainly seemed to work against Jones and Kent, but he had trouble locating his fastball away against the lefties. The umpire was also very consistently calling a tight outside corner throughout the game, and that really hurts Trevor. I think he should have been more aggressive in going after DeWitt and Furcal, since a walk was almost as harmful as a home run from either of them. Mixing up his pitches earlier in the count to lefties might help as well if he’s struggling to hit that outside corner.
That’s my $.02 on how he’s pitching now. Here’s the fangraphs link where you can see his pitch percentages at the bottom of the page. Tonight, according to the mlb gameday pitch identifying algorithm (which seemed to work pretty well for his pitches), he threw 19 fastballs (all but one to lefties), 7 sliders (all to righties), and 5 changeups. The result of the changeups were: weak fly to left, two swinging strikes, and the two weak singles.
http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1035&position=P
258: I didn’t think his location was off… He put the ball right where Bard asked for it and the plate ump didn’t give him any corners… the numbers don’t look good, but compared to Heath Bell’s 1-2-3 inning, Trevor was just better… Bell was all over the place and got hit hard twice for long outs whereas Trevor hit his spots within inches and nobody hit him hard.
Peavy gave up three runs in six innings, but he improved to 3-0 with a 1.64 ERA.
Thatcher ERA: 10.80
Bell: 1.17
Hoffman: 0-2, 9.80 ERA. 3-for-4 in save chances.
Giles went 1-for-3 to give the Padres six regulars batting .300.
The Padres had 17, 16 of them singles.
267: You’re probably right, but if the umpire thinks your off, then you are. Maybe he’s not going to “get” calls, if he’s not pitching well.
268: 17 hits, that is.
Trevor looked better. It was scary, but he looked better. It looked like he was getting squeezed a little and he got robbed of an out by a terrible call by the first base umpire.
Correction on Hoffman’s ERA: 11.57