The more regular work Mariano Rivera gets, those missing 2-3 mph from the cut fastball will return.Out of curiosity I looked back at a couple of appearances Mariano made at this point in the season last year just to see how his velocity was. On May 8th against the Indians and May 10th against the Tigers he was sitting at 93-95 MPH, right where he's supposed to be. I also looked at Moose's 20th win last year on the last day of the season, and even then, with the injury, he was still at 94-95, so there is clearly something wrong.At least that's the way Joe Girardi sees it regarding Rivera's surgically repaired right shoulder.
"We saw in spring training the velocity wasn't 93 to 94," Girardi said last night, less than 24 hours after Rivera gave up back-to-back ninth-inning homers to the Rays in an 8-6 loss at Yankee Stadium. It was the first time in Rivera's Hall of Fame career he had surrendered back-to-back blasts. "We thought it would come back and there isn't a lot of concern. I still believe we will get it back with regular work."
Then I looked at a few appearances he made after not pitching for four or more days, and on many of those days his velocity was down, at just 91-92 MPH, sometimes topping out at 93. So maybe Girardi is right, and all Mo needs is regular work.
What do you guys think, does he just need more work or is there a bigger issue going on here? I'm going to go with the "he just needs more work" point of view, probably because I'm scared to think it's anything worse.
8 Comments:
The devil will be in the details. If Girardi uses him on a regular basis, then it's not an injury. As I indicated in another blog, when I sat behind home plate against the Angels I noted that his velocity was down and there was no "pop" or late movement on the ball.
The Yankees are never completely honest when it comes to some injuries to key players, so it remains to be seen if this still recovery or are things worse than we're being told.
hey greg,
recently i started a blog of my own on the yanks and i have a quick question for you since im new to the scene. whenever i post charts or a pitchers v. batters stats nothing comes out in chart form, and i'll be coping and pasting from a chart, how do you get them to appear?
thanks,
oaks
The charts I copy and paste are usually from ESPN or MLB.com... Are you using Blogger?
Mo is done.
yeah, ive been toying around with blogger, i really like how simple it is, other then the charts i have zero issues.
oaks.
Make sure you paste things into the "compose" tab and not the "Edit Html" tab.
If this damn team would ever score any runs on a regular basis, maybe he could get in the game. I see a point in the whole argument.
thanks for the info greg
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