Evidently, the reason Kuo got taken out in the 8th wasn't just because he let Howard get on base. His elbow tightened up between innings. The guy goes from blowing people away in the 7th to bouncing warm-up pitches in the 8th. Torre said he had no choice but to take him out. Gotta be healthy. Dodgers(Saito n' Kuo) and Redsox(Beckett n' Lowell) paying high price for having some key people hurt or bothered. At this level, and over 7 games, your weaknesses are gunna get exposed. For some reason, Broxton seems to lose a lot on his fastball when he pitches consecutive nights. They say that was a fastball, but his fastball should be about 98mph and fluttering up or down. Whatever he got hurt on wasn't going very fast, and it was only moving horizontally. I've seen him do it more than I'd like to admit, and that same crappy location. Either his arm didn't have the pop he had the night before, or he just got tight. Control was poor. Just too inconsistent to be a closer on back to back nights. Cory Wade can pitch back to back nights...no problem. Pitches weren't biting as well as they did Sunday...LIL TIGHT. I've been watching games played there for 35 years now, and that ball Victorino hit was very odd. It was a line drive arc. The bull p is gunna be a question mark again next year. We could sure use a starter that can go deep into games. If we lose out on Manny, I wouldn't be surprised if we get in the running for Sabathia. We are gunna have Kuroda, Billygoat, Kershaw, Brother McLurch, but no Lowe. Either Detroit or Boston seems to be his destination. We got Schmidt taking another 15 mil from us next year, and probably again we will get zero, zip, nada from that stiff. Penny appears to be done. He hasn't really been pitching for a while. He kinda does this push/shot-put motion. His shoulder seems pretty bad. Seems to be in denial about it. Kept coming back off layoffs with nothing to offer. Who knows if he will ever pitch again.
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10-14-2008, 07:36 PM
Hybrid Mode
