Players, Coaches, and Blogs

[KoryMac5]

Interesting tidbit from MlbTradeRumors.com:

Blog Gets Through To Felix Hernandez
If you've watched any Felix Hernandez starts prior to today, you probably noticed a pattern. He tries to establish his fastball early on, throwing the pitch constantly. His heater is a fine pitch and plenty fast, but he leaves it up in the zone sometimes. And a 96 mph fastball can be easy to hit when you see ten of them in a row (relatively speaking - obviously I still couldn't hit it). Hernandez has an amazing offspeed repertoire, especially his curveball.

The die-hard fans at U.S.S. Mariner have been painfully aware of this trend for quite some time. Frustration boiled over on June 27th, when Dave Cameron wrote a post: An Open Letter To Rafael Chaves. Chaves is the Mariners' pitching coach. The letter pleaded for Chaves to make Felix mix up his pitches early on.

Cameron probably never anticipated that Chaves would actually read the letter. But he did, and the pitching coach actually gave a copy to Felix for him to read. Chaves has been trying to hammer this point home with Hernandez, but the letter helped reinforce the need for better pitch selection. Hernandez tossed eight scoreless innings today, crediting the letter for his early success. How cool is that? Blogs actually can make a difference. Open sentence to Dave Cameron: Mariners fans, fantasy baseball owners, and baseball fans in general thank you for getting through to The King. Next up, teach Rich Hill a third pitch.

Makes me wonder if any players or coaches read RedsZone or not. Couldn't of hurt for Narron to read it.

[mbgrayson]

There is more on this story at the U.S.S. Mariner blog, which is where it originated HERE: http://ussmariner.com/

[KoryMac5]

You just really have to love this quote from Felix:

“Chaves gave me a report,” Hernandez said. “On the internet, they say when I throw a lot of fastballs in the first inning, they score a lot of runs. I tried to mix all my pitches in the first inning.”

In a game filled with players that rarely take advice it's nice to know that some still do listen.

[dougdirt]

The sad part is though that you would think that teams would have this information and see what happens and you would make changes. Instead a fan had to point it out for anyone to take notice.

[redsmetz]

Originally Posted by dougdirt

The sad part is though that you would think that teams would have this information and see what happens and you would make changes. Instead a fan had to point it out for anyone to take notice.

The original story said this:

the pitching coach actually gave a copy to Felix for him to read. Chaves has been trying to hammer this point home with Hernandez, but the letter helped reinforce the need for better pitch selection.

Looks like the coach used the blog comment to reinforce what he'd been trying to get across all along.

[dougdirt]

Thanks for that redsmetz. That makes me feel a lot better actually.