Yesterday’s FTW was a little bit of a bust. Don’t get me wrong, the games were entertaining enough (mind you, I’m entertained by anything roughly called baseball), but many of the pitchers-to-watch ended up performing well below expectation in their first starts of the season.
Jamie Moyer had the chance to become the oldest pitcher ever to record a win, but didn’t look particularly good surrendering four runs on five hits in five innings to the Houston AAAstros. He did manage to control the zone well allowing only one walk while striking out two, but his fastball sat around 79 MPH topping out at 81; that’s slow even for Moyer. He gave up home runs to both Jordan Schafer and J.D. Martinez and the Rockies were shut down by Lucas Harrell, dropping the game 7-3.
Of course now many people will be jumping off the Moyer bandwagon after just one start and although he didn’t look good, it’s hard to write him off after only one start. All things considered, Moyer didn’t look terrible and there’s no reason to think he can’t get better with a few more starts under his belt.
Madison Bumgarner, another pitcher-to-watch from yesterday had trouble with his command and got rocked by the Diamondbacks surrendering four runs on seven hits while allowing two walks over just four innings. He gave up two home runs to Aaron Hill of all people and just never really looked right. Despite his struggles, his fastball velocity looked every bit as good as normal and he did manage to strike out three. We’ll chalk this up to a bump in the road on the way to a Cy Young Award.
