Monday, 26 May 2008

These Are The Daves I Know

It was good, bad and ugly all wrapped up in one for young David Purcey down on the farm against the Richmonds tonight. It was 5 and out for the young southpaw after the Chiefs put up a 5 spot in the top of the 6th to go up 8-1, making his continued mound presence kind of redundant. They might've squeezed another inning out of him, but it really didn't seem worth the bother when he'd reached 90 pitches and had been sitting on the bench for over half an hour. The Syracuses ultimately won a 12-2 laugher even though they tried to give the opposition a sporting chance by leaving Adam Lind on the bench.

As an aside, which of the Kids in the Hall do you resemble most? Sadly for me, it would be Mark McKinney.

Purcey was uncharacteristically hittable on the night, surrendering 6 hits (including a double and a triple) over his 5 inning start. He surrendered only one walk and struck out 2 but got into a lot of deep counts as evidenced by a pitch count of 93 (58 for strikes). Really? The box score doesn't lie. He was successful in keeping the ball on the ground, getting 7 ground outs to 4 fly outs, a positive sign. And it was just the one earned run in a winning effort, so that ERA still looks nice and sparkly.

For the year, Purcey's numbers look more fabulous than Elton John at the Princess Diana-Prince Charles wedding. 57 K :19 BB in 50.2 IP, 1.95 ERA, .194 BAA and a GO/AO of .88. You're not biting on this? Fickle.

If he doesn't stick, well, he doesn't stick. But the indicators for success are all there. As I said last time, you're a right hypocrite if you think 19 ABs aren't enough to evaluate Adam Lind yet 2 starts (one in a sand box park against the sluggingest of slugging lineups in baseball) suffice it to show that Purcey doesn't have the makings of a successful big leaguer. You're not a hypocrite are you, eh?

-- Johnny Was

4 comments:

Clint said...

I sort of watched Purcey's start yesterday, on game day. He was saved a few times on a play at home, and an outfield assist at thrid. LIke you mentioned he pitched from behind alot, but he did have alot of ground ball outs, which is good to see. Still discouraging to see him throw 90 plus pitches and only go to the fifth.

On an unrelated topic, I read on rotoworld that the reds may designate hatteberg, what about putting stairs back in the outfield and using hatteberg as a DH?

Clint said...

One other quick comment, I may be reading alot into this but when I first opened up gameday for the Chiefs game yesterday, Lind was in the lineup in left field 5 minutes before game time, then gone when the game started. There was no radio broadcast yesterday, so not sure if this was an ernie whitt type mistake or if Lind was taken out for an injury or something.

I'm probably reading more into this than I should, but thought I'd mention it.

The Southpaw said...

well, hatteberg is a billy beane retread, so JP would probably give him a look... If Stairs' body can't handle the rigors of every day DH-ing, I think his OF days are pretty much done.

next poll question will be about when the ax drops on wilkershit, b/c I expect it to happen suddenly. And then it's Lind o'clock, yeah!


JW

Clint said...

Lind's not in the line up again tonight did he hurt himself on a pillow again.