Jesse Crain was probably the logical choice to throw the eighth inning, even if the thought of him trying to protect a one-run lead doesn’t exactly fill a blogger with confidence.

Crain’s performance should serve as a reminder to all of us whenever we hear about a “hard-throwing pitcher.”

Throwing hard doesn’t mean much if you don’t have any movement on those hard throws.

Scott Baker pitched well enough — three runs in seven innings — while keeping the Tigers pretty much off balance with fastballs that maxed out at 90 and an assortment of breaking pitches. Crain pumped up the TV radar gun as high as 95, but there was no movement on his fastball.

The Tigers seemed willing to let Crain try for strikes with his breaking stuff and sit on the hard stuff — and hit it all over the park. Three runs, one inning, ballgame.

Baseball 101 refresher: Most major leaguers will not be overpowered.

One more thing: The bullpen, widely considered to be the staple gun of the 2008 Twins, is kind of suffering. The four right-handed up guys — Neshek/Guerrier/Rincon/Crain — have an 8.38 ERA in 19 1/3 innings. When that happens, it hardly matters that the starters have been solid for the first couple of weeks and there’s a guy who saves games (with hard stuff that sizzles and moves) and hasn’t allowed a run in his five innings.

(Wednesday morning update: Here’s an interesting post from the Rake’s Brad Zellar about the historical excellence of the Twins bullpen, dating back to the post-RD era.)

That’s enough for now. Eat some innings tonight, Senor Smoke Free.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 7:08 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.