Do you see the lower righthand corner, which is the inside corner to righties and outside corner to lefties? Derryl Cousins decided that this was not a strike. By doing so, he forced Joba away from the lower portion of the strikezone all night. As the following chart shows, most of the squeezing was done with righty hitters at the plate, killing Joba’s platoon advantage:
Joba threw 7 pitches in the lower quadrant of the zone to righties, and 6 were called balls. Essentially, a few of the walks issued by Joba should not have been walks, and he may not have left as many balls up if he could trust that a pitch in the lower half of the strikezone would be called properly. Did Joba pitch well? He most definitely did not. But his erratic stuff was exacerbated by Derryl Cousins’ ridiculously small strikezone.
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I think that there were two different strike zones over the first three innings. Smoltz was getting the veteran treatment while Joba was getting the rookie treatment.
Cousins is a pretty lousy behind the plate, so I’m not surprised.
As to whether Joba pitched well, I thought if he’d gotten a few of the calls Smoltz had gotten his numbers would have been a lot better. I also think it’s possible not getting them got him going (he seemed unusually pumped between innings) and may have led to him questioning Posada’s calls more, etc.
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Just wondering if Smotz’ plot was similar with regard to the lower part of the strike zone.
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
August 7th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Yup:
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfx/location.php?xml=http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2009/month_08/day_06/gid_2009_08_06_bosmlb_nyamlb_1//pbp/pitchers/122477.xml&batterX=0&innings=yyyyyyyyy&s_type=1&sp_type=1&h_size=700&v_size=500
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The YES announcers mentioned how Derryl Cousins was a “hitter’s umpire” when the game started. I noticed Joba getting squeezed on that low inside pitch to righties on the 2nd pitch of the game. I was yelling at my TV, ‘what the hell??’. Anyway, Smoltz did seem to get some calls that Joba did not early on, but it evened out later in the game, as evidenced by all the uncharacteristic walks given up by Smoltz.
Good job on writing this article because I was thinking the same thing last night. Remind me to bench my fantasy pitchers every time Cousins is the home plate ump.
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Like I said yesterday Joba didn’t have his great control and whether or not you believe the strike zone was shortened or not (and I do) Joba still showed a lot last night in his ability to limit damage without his best control and to only give up one run after walking the bases loaded and to strike out the last two guys to make sure it was just one run all while fighting a pitch count shows the mental make up of a future top flight starter. Maybe the stats weren’t great but this start went a long way to the development of Joba the “Ace”.
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So Cashman just said his plan is for Joba to be a starter “for the rest of the way” so it looks like he may be acquiring another starter or they may go with a 6 man rotation either way it seems that Joba will not be going to the pen and I for one am glad!
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That is great news. Joba is too valuable to sit. Moshe, this stuff is really good and helps put 7 bbs in better context. No excuses but it does help explain the numbers. The content on this site is superb. Nothing comes close.
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