And, no – I will not be including James McCann’s interesting appearance on the mound yesterday, in the chart above. Over the Statcast era, there have been a total of 19 pitches thrown by Diamondbacks which came in at a velocity below forty miles per hour. Fourteen of them were thrown by McCann last night: the others belonged to Josh Rojas (2), Jose Herrera (2) and Tucker Barnhart (1). McCann bottomed out at just 35.8 mph, the slowest pitch recorded in Arizona franchise history. Mind you, that was
still lickety-split compared to the 33.6 mph lollipop delivered by Dylan Moore of the Phillies to CJ Abrams on Monday. The all-time low? 21.7 mph by… Garrett Crochet? Of course, there’s a caveat…
After that unfortunate pounding, it’ll be interesting to see how the D-backs bounce back, especially given the equally unfortunate loss of Jordan Lawlar. Just after he had hit his first home-run as well, and had got his numbers for the season up to 6-for-18 with a .956 OPS. Small sample size, but there’s no arguing that Lawlar looked an awful lot better this year than he had previously. Despite a gaffe last night, his performance in the outfield had generally been solid, especially considering the near-total lack of professional experience Jordan had at the position. Hope he heals quickly and fully, and returns to take up where he left off.
Tonight, we’ll get to see if Eduardo Rodriguez’s first start was a genuine turn for the better, or if it needs to filed in the “one swallow doesn’t make a summer” category. It wasn’t the deepest of outings, going only five innings. He wasn’t particularly inefficient, using 79 pitches to get to that point. I think it was more a case of it being so early in the season. I’d imagine the training wheels are off tonight, with regard to pitch count, and we could probably do with a quality start from E-Rod, give the bullpen a bit of a breather.
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