Game 71 – Pitching Ahead

Another rough start for Litsch as all the baserunners are catching up to him. Litsch struggled w/command and as a result he got hit. He threw 1st pitch balls to 12 batters, of which 5 got hits. Of the 16 batters he threw 1st pitch strikes to, only 3 got hits (2 of them were 1st pitch hits). Furthermore, here are the counts to the batters in the 3rd inning when they put the ball in play and the results: 2-1 (2B), 0-2 (Lineout), 1-0 (1B), 2-0 (1B), 1-0 (1B), 0-1 (Flyout), 2-0 (1B), 2-2 (Flyout). Notice the pattern, when he is behind he gets hit, when ahead he gets outs.

Again the Blue Jays offence did little for most of the game. They picked up just 1 hit off Lilly through 6 and despite 5 walks could not score. Once the bullpen came in the Jays woke up and scored 4 runs, but it was too little too late as they had already fallen behind 7-0. For the record the Jays went 1 for 8 w/RISP.

Once again Pinella went to Marmol w/the Cubs up by 6. Like I said he is going to wear him out.

Had Barajas held on to the throw from Wells on the Lee 1B they could have been out of the inning w/only 1 run scored instead of 4 (and those 3 runs ended up representing the difference in the game).

I’m not sure why Gibbons left Camp in so long. Granted after giving up hits to the 1st 3 hitters he faced in the 7th he then retired 7 of 8 and ended up only throwing 29 pitches. However, w/the off-day tomorrow why not get someone else in there to pitch the 9th. Camp had thrown 23 pitches up to that point and you can’t assume he is going to only need 6 pitches to get through the 9th.

Here are the stats:
Adv: McDonald (1)
P-Adv: Eyre
NAdv: Theriot
P-NAdv: Litsch (3)
WG: Mench (2)
DE: Barajas (2)