Kevin Slowey seems like a really smart guy who understands that pitching is about making adjustments — and can make ‘em.

He showed that off last night when he battled through the first inning — single, single, deep sac fly, hard double-play grounder — and then held the Royals to two hits and one walk over the next six innings.

Think back to early in the season when some people wondered if he was really ready to be a successful major league pitching. Here’s a Section 220 excerpt from late May: “Kevin Slowey vs. the Tigers tonight doesn’t exactly inspire confidence based on his last two starts. He needs to figure out how to find a bit extra so he doesn’t get into two-strike duels with opposing hitters. The Twins point of view is that Slowey needs to figure that out in the majors because he would dominate if returned to Triple-A and it would likely slow his progress.”

By the way, Slowey won that start against Detroit, his first win of the season after four losses.

Since getting pummeled by the White Sox during those four games of hell in early June, Slowey is 10-3 in 16 starts with a 2.98 ERA and only 105 runners allowed in 103 innings. In that May post, I mentioned the struggles of Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux early in their careers, with the idea that maybe Slowey would follow their career paths. I think that could still happen.

Whatever the case, the Twins were right about having him learn up here rather than in Rochester.

As Bert pointed out last night, Slowey is gaining command within the strike zone, which makes him more effective at working batters and staying away from the two-strike, foul-filled duels that boosted his pitch count in his early starts. In one of them, at Colorado, he managed to throw 109 pitches in 5 2/3 innings despite walking only one batter (and giving up seven hits).

That’s a stark contrast to the middle-inning meltdowns that have plagued Glen Perkins, who could (and perhaps will) learn from Slowey’s example.

It’s been fun to watch him.

(A side note: Section 220 is pleased to bring you this public service announcement from the blog Bugs and Cranks.)

Day game today. On FSN. Find a place to watch. It’s not slacking because there’s a pennant race going on.

other people are here too

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 8:56 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.