Monday, December 29, 2008

I'm Back In Time To Welcome ...........

The "Big Unit" to San Francisco! Wait what? Let's break this down like a cardboard box......... We now have a rotation featuring 3 former cy young awards, (which will later on become a trivia question down the road.) But trivia aside was this a good use of Hamilton's for our beloved San Francisco Giants?
Our rotation now sounds like a fantasy baseball melodrama with Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Johnson and the other guy........ZITO. That gives us the potential to be as strong 1-5 as any other team in the league because even as much as we all "strongly dislike" Mr. Zito he's still an above average #5 starter albeit one that pulls in 18 million dollars per year. There has been some scuttlebut going around the baseball world saying Johnson "fell off" his last album unlike Dr. Dre wasn't the chronic (sorry i had to) at the same time of course he isn't the 97 mph fastball slider that makes you want to cry dymano at age 45. But, he can still throw 89-93 touching 94 with good tilt on the old breaking piece and a decent splitter. And according to ESPN's Keth Law he struck out 22.4% of opposing batters last year which was well above league average. 
Lat year Johnson went 11-10 with a below average league era of 3.91 and 173 k's. In the very hitter friendly Chase Field. Also remember the league average era was 4.32 for starting pitchers last year. What else is great is Johnson has developed impecable control as he has gotten older and only walked 41 batters of 181 innings last year which leads to a 4.2:1 k/bb rate. A move to AT&T park should only help his numbers to because Johnson has become a fly ball pitcher due to the fact that he's lost tilt on his slider and zip on his fastball which he has always thrown up in the zone anyway...................bed-time part 2 tommorow 

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