Baseball is a bewildering game.
Last Wednesday night at the hitter friendly Juice Box, Dontrelle Willis threw 91 pitches in hurling a complete game 5-2 victory for the Marlins over the Stros. The Stros’ Wade Miller left that game in the sixth inning with a sore neck.
On Tuesday night, Willis threw 96 pitches in four innings and Miller pitched seven effective innings as the Stros’ pummelled the Fish, 9-2 at pitcher friendly Pro Player Stadium. Go figure.
Lance Berkman led the Stros’ hitting attack as he whacked four hits — including a double and a solo yak — and had 2 RBI’s and 2 runs. Inexplicably, Stros’ manager Jimy Williams continues to bat Berkman in either the fifth or sixth hole even though every player hitting in front of him in the Astros’ lineup is an inferior hitter. Oh, well. Even outmaker supreme Brad Ausmus had a two run crank and 3 RBI’s. The big lead allowed the Stros to give seldom used relievers Ricky Stone and Brandon Duckworth some work, and they worked the last three innings without incident.
Things are likely to pick up for the Fish in the Wednesday game as Tim Redding pitches for the Stros against the Marlins’ Carl Pavano, who dominated the Stros’ in a game last week. Roy O and the Marlins’ Josh Beckett — two of the best young pitchers in MLB — tangle in the Thursday game.
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That’s Dontrelle for you; frustratingly inconsistent. What happens with D is he gets overexcited, and starts throwing balls. When he does that, his stuff is not so good that you can’t make him pay when he does eventually have to throw strikes. Two things need to happen: one, D needs to rein in some of his wonderful enthusiasm, as it causes him to overthrow and miss his spots. Two, he needs to add a consistent change-up, which he is working on but doesn’t throw so well yet. Right now, he’s pretty much exclusively a fastball-slider pitcher, with the odd curveball thrown in.
His funky delivery helps him, but he needs a third pitch that can also act as a consistent “out” pitch, IMO.
It does look like Willis has a tendency to overthrow, which is not unusual for young power pitchers. Also, you’re right that he could use a good off-speed pitch. However, the bottom line is that he is still a very good looking 21 year old pitcher. With a talent like that, you almost have to let him make his learning errors at the MLB level where lesser talents would be learning those lessons at AAA or AA.
No argument here.