Archive for the ‘Brett Cecil’ Category

When the Jays announced it was Brett Cecil coming up to make Brandon Morrow’s start on Sunday, I wrote that a new perspective on sequencing, gleaned from the teachings of Sal Fasano, suggested Brett Cecil was well on his way to becoming a slop-tossing junkballer. Unable to count on his fastball due to declining velocity and command, he would flip breaking balls and changeups in at an uncommon rate out of desperation.

The Brett Cecil we saw Sunday afternoon was not quite that, I am somewhat relieved to report. Both Cecil and manager John Farrell mentioned his fastball command a key after the fact. The fastball was indeed the pitch Cecil relied on most en route to five innings of five strikeout, one walk, two run ball. A win and everything!

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Kyle Drabek diagnosed with right elbow UCL sprain. Brett Cecil is being recalled. #BlueJays

— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) June 15, 2012

Welp. This is a thing.

So Brett Cecil, after what can only be considered a successful run in the minor leagues, is back in bigs. Cecil made 10 starts between New Hampshire and Vegas, striking out 40 with only 14 walks in 49.1 innings. Only two home runs surrendered, which can only be a positive thing, right?

More than any other pitcher, fans and experts alike exhort Brett Cecil to ‘get the ball down’ in the zone. Usually it’s empty banter, something people say when they can’t think of something better. But for a pitcher like Cecil — he of the vanishing velocity — it seems a legitimate concern.

Brendan Kennedy of the Toronto Star wrote about Cecil this week, travelling to Vegas to speak with the Jays lefty. While his velocity remains in the upper 80s, Cecil seems to have worked on his sequencing during his time in New Hamsphire, working closely with current Fisher Cats manager Sal Fasano.

Fasano, a former catcher, worked with Cecil on his pitch selection strategy coming up with different ways to attack both left-handed and right-handed batters. Cecil said he had never thought about those kinds of strategies before and he’s seen a marked improvement in his pitching.

Kennedy also notes Cecil adjusted his delivery to create more deception, which tells us all we need to know about Brett Cecil at this stage of his career.

Cecil is now a full-blown junkballer, throwing soft trash up in any count. Pitching backwards and just doing what he must to keep hitters off-balance. Not a bad way to make a living except the margins for error are razor thin. A start against the Phillies on Sunday isn’t the worst re-introduction to the bigs. They are hardly an offensive juggernaut and might provide a soft landing spot for Cecil.

As for Drabek…I guess wait and see? It will be interesting to determine when he was actually hurt. Was Wednesday the first time or the worst time? Has he been battling this for weeks? While you never want to see anyone hurt, at least an injury might help explain away his awful run on the mound for the last six weeks or so.

Parkes always rolls his eyes at me when I link to the New Hampshire Union-Leader’s Kevin Gray, or his Gray Matter blog, because of, y’know, the whole Yu Darvish nonsense thing. But… whatever. Interesting content is interesting content, and the other day Gray posted a 12 minute clip of a recent conversation with demoted supposed-number-three-starter Brett Cecil– with some of catcher Brian Jeroloman’s insight tossed in for good measure.

“Cecil, who starts Thursday at New Britain, topped out at 87-mph in his most recent start for the Fisher Cats. (That’s an improvement of a few mph.),” Gray tells us. Wait… really???

Here’s what the pitcher had to say…

The National Post’s John Lott tweeted moments ago that the Toronto Blue Jays have demoted Brett Cecil all the way down to Double A, and have called up Joel Carreno. Lott believes that Carreno will start the third game of the season in Cleveland, after Rickey Romero and Brandon Morrow, with Henderson Alvarez starting the home opener and Kyle Drabek following him in the rotation.

We’ve become rather familiar in the last week with Cecil’s struggles to not only find his fading velocity, but also some semblance of command on the mound. He struggled to the point of hilarity in his last Spring Training start yesterday, and in no way appeared ready to being the season at the MLB level.

Carreno, meanwhile, impressed as a reliever in his eleven appearances at the big league level last year, striking out almost a quarter of the batters he faced while only walking 6.8%. In his limited sample, he also showed an ability to keep the ball on the ground, inducing 22 ground balls compared to 14 fly balls and five line drives with his low nineties sinker. His ability to throw a curve ball for strikes has led to something of an over reliance, but as batters adjust to his approach, he’ll have to adapt.

The big question is whether or not he can adapt as a starter going through a lineup multiple times. Frankly, my money is on “not so much.” However, he found some success last season as a starter in New Hampshire. Unless he’s been able to further strengthen his sinker since last year, we can expect a lot of long innings with Carreno on the mound where batters get few pitches to hit. That will most likely result in a lot of strikeouts, but also a lot of walks, and then, as he tires, a lot of hits and a lot of runs.

I’d say hopefully, this audition is brief, but there isn’t a whole lot of extra depth among Major League ready starters in the organization. It’s expected that the Blue Jays will go to a four man rotation after the opening two series, at least until April 21.