Everyone, I now believe it is safe to say that Jake Westbrook has regained his bearings and has started to feel comfortable out there on the mound. It makes a lot of sense to me that it would take a few starts to get back to some level of comfort and stability after being away from the Major League level of competition for nearly two years. I'm just glad that he has delivered two pretty darn good starts in a row to get his first two wins since the 2008 season.
When you take a look at the numbers, you can see just how good these last two starts were for Westbrook. Granted, he wasn't facing the Yankees, Red Sox, Rays, etc. but a win against any team is the same in the column. In his start at Kansas City on the 11th of this month, he went 6 innings, gave up 1 run on 5 hits with 2 K's and 2 walks. That's a solid quality start that was good enough for his first win of the season.
He followed that up with a fantastic start against the Orioles this past Sunday, where he pitched a complete game for the first time April 8, 2008 against the Angels. It took him just 116 pitches and 77 of those went for strikes (That's 66% for those of you who like to keep track of that type of thing). Not only did he have those 66% strikes, he had 8 K's, only 1 walk, and really only made one mistake and that was a solo homer given up to DH Luke Scott. But here's my favorite stat: of the 27 outs, of course 8 were strike outs, but then 15 were ground outs and only 3 were fly outs. That is how you know Westbrook is feeling good out on the mound - the sinker is sinking and he's getting a whole lot of ground outs.
So Mr. Westbrook, I'm very glad to see that you're back in form and I sincerely hope that you keep it up. Not only because you play for the Tribe and I want to see them win, but because I think you're a class act and would like to see you have a successful season no matter who you play for.
~MAS
No comments:
Post a Comment