Aaron_Kennelly

Cease opened the game throwing 93-94 to the first batter or two, and then opened it up to 95-96. He came back out in the second and was 93-94 for a couple batters, and then ramped it up again. He was mostly 95-96 the rest of the game, and hit 97 quite a bit, too. I don't think he went any higher than that. For some reason they were able to pile up some hits against him. I'm not sure how; his stuff was incredible. The homer surely was because I was there to ruin him. The same batter that took him deep struck out the following at bat and offered the worst swing I've ever seen from a professional baseball player on strike 3. His control wasn't such a huge problem. He was off some, but just here and there, and usually not by much. He needs to get more economical, though, for sure. He got into a lot of deep counts. And they were able to fight him off some before he finally put them away. His fastball is definitely great, obviously. He has a lot of run on it, too. He struck out several guys with high heat on swings that weren't even close. The terrible swing I previously mentioned was on some high heat. I think the guy was planning on not swinging, and then thought it would be a strike, so he started a swing, way too late on 96, and then realized it wasn't a strike and tried to stop halfway through, as the pitch ran well off the plate. He just didn't stand a chance and looked completely foolish. I was sitting right behind the plate and had a good view of how much run was on his fastball. It was insane. I did wonder if he was throwing two different fastballs or maybe just a weird change or something else. He threw a few pitches at 91-92 throughout the game. And they were low and looked like they had more sink to them. He may have just taken some off. He missed with the fastball some. When he throws the fastball like he wants, it's near unhittable. But he still needs to work on his command of it. The thing that stole the show, to me, was his curve, though. His curve looked incredible. Not only was it a great, big, power curve, but he was commanding it the whole night. He threw it a lot early in the count for strikes. He was nailing it, too. Bringing it just over the inside corner on righties and to the outside corner on lefties. He would bury it when he got to two strikes trying to get batters to chase. But he used it most effectively early in the count to get called strikes. Hitters rarely offered at it. It's just an impossibly difficult pitch. And he had a real great feel for it last night. I didn't like what I saw from the change. It looked a little flat. And he wasn't deceiving hitters with it. They struck it well a couple of times. Maybe it was because I am measuring it up against the fastball and curve and it will do alright since hitters have to key in on those two pitches. But I think it needs a lot of work. There just wasn't the same movement or crispness with it as the other two pitches. His FB, like I said, was mostly 95-96. His curve was around 78. And the change was around 81. The fastball is obviously the big thing with his velo, especially if he pumps it up closer to triple digits as it gets warmer. And it, for sure, is a great pitch. But I really was enamored by his curve. That thing is nasty. And I was kinda shocked by how well he commanded it last night. I was very impressed. He's got two excellent pitches. Hopefully he figures out the change to go with them.

Yeah, I like toasted ravioli, but Sosa's point is spot on. They are basically dive bar food here in Central Illinois -- on par with mini tacos and mozzarella sticks -- and we're not exactly known for our cuisine. For a city to be known for that is a sad, sad thing.

I'm just going to put it out there: Eddie Butler for NLDS Game 1 starter.

Let's sweep these assholes.

So, without seeing anything yet, from what I've read he looked good. His velo was way up. He throws changeups and sliders harder than our other starters throw fastballs.

I got some video of Cease and Mekkes that I'll post tomorrow. And I'll give an in-person report about how much Cease sucks.

Man, this Cease guy sucks! So terrible. Sad!

Andrew Ely pinch hit and struck out. Better drop him to #5, TT.

2IP 1H 0R 0BB 4K for Michael Rucker.

Drop: Trevor Story Add: Bryce Harper.

An interesting note is that Kyle Hendricks' xStats from last year are nearly identical to his actual numbers, when we were assured in Cy Young discussion that he was actually just lucky and not an actual ace.

Good stuff. I'm not even so sure that the defense is completely to blame. I think they are to blame some, for sure. They just haven't been as sharp defensively. And that's not something I expect to continue. There are a lot of really good defenders on this team. And I suspect they'll get their horsefeathers together. But, if you look at the expected stats at https://www.xstats.org/ that Andrew Perpetua keeps, his expected stats are also based off of batted ball direction, which Baseball Savant's aren't. Savant's method only looks at launch angle and exit velocity. Pepetua's calculations have Lester's and Arrieta's xBA and xwOBA higher than Savant's, though not as high as their actual numbers. So I think another problem is that balls are just finding holes -- or finding where there usually are holes. Add them both together, porous defense and finding holes, and then realize it's a small sample size and weird stuff can happen.

No longer on the Jon Jay bandwagon.

Get the horsefeathers out of here

KB! Let's go.

Kyle's ERA is below 3 now.

Nope.

Kyle Hendricks: Somehow Kyle Hendricks.

It was not. It was a weird play because of a shift. Javy was trying to do too many things at once, thinking he needed to make the play at second himself, as he wasn't sure if Seal Boy would be able to get to the bag. An he just booted it.

Few things... - a 1:1 K:B outing against A level competition is not what an excellent minor league outing is made of. Standards are high! The other day, you were taking positives from an outing in which Ryan Kellogg served up 5 home runs.

Those guys from Iowa did yeoman's work eating up innings for us.

#weareabove.500

Eh, Jon Jay probably deserves some more errors anyway.

Am I correct to assume that Cease will pitch on Thursday? I'm already going to see South Bend in Peoria on Friday. But if Cease is going Thursday, I think I'll have to go to that one, too.