Ryan Vogelsong’s Bent-armed Swing Emporium

Published by on October 16, 2012 | 9 Responses

I’m going to ask you to remember way back in the middle of August and September. Way back to when Ryan Vogelsong was struggling. Before August 13, Vogelsong’s league leading ERA sat at 2.27. Seven games later, Vogelsong’s ERA sat at 3.65. Panic ensued among the fan base. Was Vogelsong finished? He was giving up a jillion hits per start. It wasn’t fun. Had the magic ran out of his right arm? Over that seven game stretch, Vogelsong pitched 29.2 innings, gave up 48 hits, and 34 earned runs. Batters hit a combined .366/.417/.634 slash during those seven games.

It was an epically bad stretch — unlucky, too — of pitching.

Tonight, Vogelsong reminded us why he’s still Ryan Vogelsong, throwing the best start of any Giants starter this postseason. Rarely do I find FOX’s baseball commentary “good” but I had to give it to Tim McCarver, he made an astute observation on Vogelsong’s fastball during the game. In the earlier stages of the game, Vogelsong was nipping the outside corners of the strike zone. Later in the game, Posey and Vogelsong started to work the batters in with the hard stuff and it paid huge dividends: lots of bent-armed, harmless, looping pop-up swings.

Of the 12 Vogelsong fastballs that were put into play, four were pop outs, two were groundouts, three were doubles (two from Beltran), one went for single, and one went for a flyout and one for a forceout. Outside of Carlos Beltran — who appears to be good at this sport of baseball — Vogelsong’s fastball was a tremendous weapon for him tonight.

This strikeout against Allen Craig pretty much sums it up.

92 mph. Inner half of plate. Bent. Arms.

Vogelsong’s final line: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 4 SO. Vintage Vogelsong.

Miscellaneous post-game thoughts:

* Watching Matt Holliday slide into second base, and Marco Scutaro, like a caveman in the first inning sent shivers down my spine. Moving aside whether or not it was a legal slide — I’m not sure how it was legal; Holliday was nearly the past the bag before he slid — I’ve never been one for shoehorning the football mentality into baseball. Brutal collisions really have no place in the game and I would love to see MLB try and protect its players a little more by cracking down on needless collisions. What a stupid, brainless play. Blech.

* Per this series of tweets from Alex Pavlovic, Scutaro’s X-rays came back negative. He’s going to get an MRI tomorrow. Ryan Theriot will step in if he’s not ready for Game Three.

* Speaking of horrific collisions, for the love of God, FOX, please stop showing us Buster Posey’s injury from last year. I get that Posey’s ridiculous comeback is a story, but I’m so tired of watching that play — I was tired after I saw it for the second time in 2011 — that I really think it’s in poor taste to keep showing it these days. Move on, please.

Great game tonight. Let’s hope that Scutaro is OK. Let’s also hope that the offense is starting to come around a little. If the Giants had a more consistent game from Bumgarner in Game One, this series could easily be headed to St. Louis with the Giants up 2-0.

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BradleyEmden
BradleyEmden

Watching the games that Vogelsong was hit hard, was perplexing because he did not seem to be doing things much differrent than in the games that he pitches well.  I think it may be more than just luck, I suspect that he was tipping his pitches, and I really believe in the Washington series, that Johnson was stealing Bochy's signs.  They seemed to know everything that was coming. Vogelsong has been our ACE in the post season.

ogc
ogc

It should be also noted that Vogelsong said that he was not in a good groove early on, but then once he found the right groove mechanically, he went with it for the rest of the game.  That was around the 3rd inning.  That could account for the difference in how he pitched early vs. later.  Just FYI.

I agree about the BABIPing, I think I commented on that other article link, but it should be noted that Vogelsong had two more bad starts before he put it together again, so you never know how long the bad luck will continue.

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DrBGiantsfan
DrBGiantsfan

I love it when Vogie puts on one of his fastball clinics.  It's still the best pitch in baseball when it's used properly and it doesn't have to go 97 MPH.  By incorporating the 4 seamer, 2 seamer and cut version of the pitch and using them on both edges of the strike zone, Vogie essentially has 6 pitches before he even goes to the curveball and changeup.

If you go back and look at his boxscores from the period he was getting hit hard, it is apparent that there was a lot of BABIPing going on that made it a lot worse than it should have been.

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BradleyEmden
BradleyEmden

The slide is part of the game. TV is a medium of sensationalism, hence the Posey play from last year has not had its final play on TV in this post season.  Great game. Giants finally get a call, but it was not at a key part of the game.  Belt has better vision of the K zone than most of the umps behind the plate. The Cardinals defense, except of  Holiday kept the score even closer than it would have been.

ogc
ogc

BradleyEmden The slide is not part of the game, unless injuring players is part of the game.  I don't know why baseball still allows runners to intentionally maim players in the name of "hard play".  Not that I'm against hard play, but too many players go over the line and injure other players with their stupid acts.

Just look at that slide, he barely got a piece of the bag with the slide, any further and he would have missed it completely.  Then how can one explain his barreling slide?  How does that help him get to 2B safely to beat the ball?  He may have been playing hard, but his stupid move could have really injured Scutaro.

I've been unhappy about such plays since Pete Rose slammed Ray Fosse's promising career into the toilet.  Contact cannot be avoided, but we can do a lot better to protect our players.  I am all for minimizing potential injuries that knock potentially great players out of the league.  That does the Majors no favor to lose a guy who could have been a superstar and just makes the majors that much lesser.  I would prefer a Clash of the Titans, than the Paraolympics.  

I've never had a good idea for how to get less of these plays until now.  My idea is to make injuries no-fault:  no fault is assigned for a player injury.  However, if a fielder is injured by the runner in fielding the play, the runner is unavailable to his team for as long as the fielder is unavailable to his team.  And if the fielder ends up on the DL, the runner ends up on the DL too.  That should get more runners thinking more about the potential for injury and make them take less risky chances.

Because, why should the fielder's team be the only one suffering from the accident from the collision that the runner instigated?  They are the one being penalized for the runner's stupid act, generally, 99 out of 100 times, the runner is still healthy when there is an injured fielder, rarely is the runner injured but the fielder isn't.   Thus Cousins would have been unable to play until spring training when Posey did, and Holliday would not play until Scutaro is in the lineup again, and would have left the game at the same time Scutaro had to leave.  

And teams have been on both sides of this forever too, so I don't know why they still put up with this.  Ultimately, they are brothers in this game, and they bring the game down by taking out another of their brothers.  At minimum, you would think that the Players Association would do something about it, because then they lose a Buster Posey from their ranks, how is that good for baseball?

BradleyEmden
BradleyEmden

ogc  In bygone days guys like Ty Cobb would slide into second base spikes up in the air, and fielder beware.  This slide was not intended to be safe at second, but to stop the double play.  Why did the ump not call interference and call the runner out at first if the play was so illegal?  Why did MLB or the NL offices not suspend him for an illegal play?  Perhaps the play was borderline rough compared to some of the more horrific intentional collisions of the past, ie; the Fosse/Rose collision.

DrBGiantsfan
DrBGiantsfan

BradleyEmden ogc Umps make bad calls all the time.  Just because the ump did not call the runner out at first does not mean it was a legal slide.  Intentional?  The Giants have all said they don't think he was intentionally trying to hurt Scooter, so I'll take their word for it.  A suspension or ejection would not be in order unless Holliday was judge to be intentionally trying to harm Scooter, but by the rules of the game, it should have been ruled an illegal slide and the runner at first called out.