Archive for the ‘Dustin McGowan’ Category

McGowan Injured, But it’s Only His Foot

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Dustin McGowan, Injuries on Mar 25, 2012

Dustin McGowan left in the second inning of his minor league start today, with plantar fasciitis in his right foot. “After throwing four high pitches, McGowan threw down his glove, pointed to his foot and summoned a trainer,” said Jays TV analyst Pat Tabler, who was in attendance, according to John Lott in the National Post.

He’s listed as day-to-day, “although plantar fasciitis can require an extended period to heal,” Lott notes.

It’s an unfortunate setback for a less-than-rock-solid back end of the Jays rotation, but as the fifth starter, McGowan might not be needed much during the first part of April anyway. With an off-day in each of the first three weeks of April, the club can skip some starts from their fifth starter, mitigating the loss– not that Kyle Drabek, the way he’s pitched this spring, would necessarily be a step down from McGowan anyway, quite frankly.

So… there’s that.

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Layin’ Down the Law (Again): Yesterday’s News

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Dustin McGowan, Eric Thames, Keith Law, Kyle Drabek, Position Battles, Prospecting, Rotation Battles, Travis Snider on Mar 16, 2012

After yesterday’s heavy dose of realism, Jays fans demanded that Keith Law, the obliterator of all their little hopes and dreams, come forth and defend his absurd views on Dustin McGowan!

Or… probably it was just his contract with TSN Radio. Or maybe they just asked.

Either way, KLaw hit the airwaves– the free, public airwaves that I can quote anything from with a clear conscience, I should add– this afternoon and elaborated on what he saw yesterday when he took in the epic Grapefruit League tilt between the Jays and the Astros in Kissimmee.

And, actually, he skipped a lot of the stuff about McGowan. Or… probably I just tuned in a little too late to catch it.

What I did hear was pretty seriously awesome, especially where two the players I’d like to see the Jays not dick around are concerned: Kyle Drabek and Travis Snider.

He also talked Anthony Gose, Travis d’Arnaud, about the back of the rotation in general, and followed up his piece from yesterday with some activity in the comments.

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Layin’ Down the Law: Coles Notes from Kissimmee

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Dustin McGowan, Keith Law, Kyle Drabek on Mar 15, 2012

It’s not often that Keith Law posts an entire piece about the Jays, which means that it’s not often that I have to worry about having to toe the line on just how much of his work it’s appropriate to post here. It’s well worth it to get ESPN Insider– even just for KLaw’s work alone– and I wouldn’t want to devalue that (in whatever tiny way I’m capable of) by quoting too much of his report today on the Jays he saw face Houston, so… I guess we’ll just go with the Coles Notes version. Law’s piece is far more elaborate:

- Law was unimpressed with McGowan, who he calls “a shadow of what he used to be.” Ouch. Apparently he was most unimpressed by how long it took for McGowan to get up to his top velocity of 95 and 96, and his “soft-breaking slider that you can see pretty early out of his hand.”

- The report on Kyle Drabek is much better. He “looked solid with a new, more controlled delivery and increased use of a two-seamer with sharp sinking action.” Law was especially impressed with his new mechanics, landing spot, and the consistency with which he was able to stay in line and not fall off the mound. He also liked the cutter Drabek threw “at 87-88 that looked just the like fastball out of his hand, allowing him to use it in changeup counts.”

- A couple interesting notes from the pair battling for the Jays left field position, as Law says that Eric Thames got a pair of cheap hits on outfield misplays, and that Travis Snider’s lone bright spot– a hard double– was extra bright, since it was on “a ball he wouldn’t have gotten to last year with his hands set up higher than they are now.”

- He also had notes on prospects Travis d’Arnaud, Jake Marisnick, and Anthony Gose– who laid down an “unfieldable” bunt for a hit.

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So… McGowan and Drabek Both Pitched Today

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Dustin McGowan, Kyle Drabek, Rotation Battles on Mar 15, 2012

Far be it from me to actually give too much of a shit about the ins and outs of every spring training game– especially those with three weeks still to go until Opening Day– but with both Dustin McGowan and Kyle Drabek pitching today, at the very least their performances warrant some scrutiny. Y’know, as much as anybody’s performance does at this point in the spring. Or in a game against the damn hopeless Astros.

ESPN’s Keith Law was at the game and tweeted out some stray observations, including an assertion that McGowan, who pitched first, looked “very ordinary so far.”

That, however, was early on, and by the end of the outing, McGowan had come around.

The Fan’s Mike Wilner echoed the sentiment that McGowan improved as his day went on. “He looked very good after the first inning,” he tweeted, “not so great in the first.” On the day McGowan went three innings, giving up one hit, an unearned run, walking one and striking out three, which on the whole is pretty successful. However, he threw 46 pitches, 27 for strikes, according to Wilner. That rate is close to the percentage of strikes he threw in his 21 innings in the Majors last year, which I think we can agree simply isn’t going to cut it– however, we’re talking about such small sample sizes here that just an extra strike or two one way or the other changes the way the rate looks pretty significantly. Still, it’s hardly doom and gloom, and any day that McGowan finishes where he’s still healthy remains, at this point, a pretty damn good day.

Not only that, Richard Griffin of the Toronto Star points out that McGowan threw a bullpen session between today’s start and his previous one, the first time he’s been able to do so since since 2008.

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Sounds Like McGowan Looked Good

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Dustin McGowan on Mar 10, 2012

The Jays won’t play a televised game until St. Patrick’s Day (and then it’s only available on MLB.TV, with Sportsnet’s first broadcast not coming until the next day, according to the club’s online broadcast schedule), so those of us not dicking around in buttfuck Florida only have the audio and the assorted reports of the poor souls who are to go on. But by the sounds of things, Dustin McGowan’s first start of the spring went very well.

Granted, it was against the Houston Astros, but when you think about it, any start in which his shoulder doesn’t explode apart into a billion third base coach-maiming projectiles is probably a good thing.

And McGowan did us one better, topping at 96 on the stadium radar gun, according to Jeff Blair and Ken Fidlin, and sitting consistently at 93, according to Gregor Chisholm, who tells me the gun considered to be more accurate than last year,

Perhaps more importantly, he threw 15 of his 24 pitches for strikes– a 62.5% rate, in an absurdly small sample, but still, better than the 57% he threw in the Majors in 2012. This information is relayed by Chisholm, and Mike Wilner of the Fan 590, who writes that “McGowan looked terrific.  He hit his spots, his fastball had good life and his slider had great bite.”

The almost-30-year-old gave up just one hit in his two innings of work, and according to Wilner, “said he felt normal, which is something he hadn’t felt the last four springs.” On the broadcast, Wilner– who, it should be noted, seem to me about as optimistic on McGowan over the winter as anyone– added that he looked like pretty much the same guy we remember.

One hopes.

It’s way early, of course, so hopes are all we’ve really got. But it sure is nice hurt to have these ones– especially with rumblings of potential concern for Brett Cecil (see previous post).

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‘Tis the Season for Believing in the Comeback

Posted by Andrew Stoeten under Dustin McGowan on Feb 29, 2012

The story of Dustin McGowan is a rather amazing, harrowing (in outside-the-real-world millionaires-playing-sports terms), and at the moment, an uplifting one. And it’s one that I don’t want to be the guy constantly throwing cold water on. But at the same time, it’s a ridiculously cautious optimism I have– if you can even call it optimism– for the possibility that McGowan will show up as a 29-year-old and pick up anywhere close to where he left off in 2007.

That said, the early– very early– reports on him are glowing.

“In the early days of spring training, John Farrell has been careful not to praise his pitchers after a short mound session against batters who behave like statues,” writes John Lott in the National Post. “But on Tuesday, the Toronto Blue Jays manager could not hold his reserve. It was a hot day and maybe the sunshine was getting to him. But Farrell had also just watched Dustin McGowan throw 25 pitches to five teammates, some of whom muttered about the filth the big right-hander was serving up.”

“The right-hander, catching people’s eye with his command and stuff, dazzled teammates Adam Lind, Kelly Johnson and Yunel Escobar with his slider and changeup, each of them taking turns walking out of the cage shaking his head,” writes Shi Davidi of Sportsnet.

“The fact that he was down in the strike zone, with the kind of power he had, with the heaviness to his fastball, the action to his secondary stuff – he was impressive today, there’s no doubt,” John Farrell said, as quoted by both pieces.

Of course, Farrell said earlier in the winter that he doesn’t anticipate seeing McGowan going beyond 140 or 150 innings this season– itself a wildly optimistic suggestion, I think. They’ve started out being cautious, with McGowan working every three days right now, instead of every other day, as the rest of his fellow pitchers are. But the Jays, if we can take any impressions they’re giving us seriously (which we probably can’t), seem to think that having a proper off-season for once– as opposed to what Lott calls last year’s “ambitious rehab program that saw him throwing in earnest for almost 11 consecutive months– is going to help.

“He’s having a very good camp. It’s just great to see that after a normal off-season that he’s come back in and probably felt better about himself physically, and I think it’s showing up in the way he’s throwing the baseball,” Farrell said.

“It felt like me,” McGowan added. It’s easy to get carried away at this stage but, shit, let’s hope it keeps up.

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