Look Matt Latos is a good pitcher, he was one of the best while here. I really liked his stuff. Was he a head case? Yes, yes he was but, who cares when ya win? I wish him well. A four for one deal is better than what we got for Agon. I miss them both, however this is the way of this game. Just because we fans would like to keep our best players, as you already know that just doesn't happen in SanDiego. I wished it did, as it can be hard to see them go. I still miss Jake Peavy, glad we had him for the time that we did but its life in a small market town like SanDiego. That's the part about baseball that I don't like!

I watched one Latos start this year and his stuff was noticeably worse. His fastball wasn't as crisp and was sitting 91-92 and his breaking stuff did not look sharp either. He also kept shaking off Devin M. as did the rest of the Reds pitchers. I like Matt but am afraid moving from Balsey and Black is really going to hurt him.

his numbers looking pretty good - slightly down from 2010 but that's not unusual as guys move to being more pitcher than thrower

Fastball 92.8 (93,0 in 2011, 94.0 in 2010)
Two seamer - 91.5 (91.8 in 2011 - 92.3 in 2010)
Cutter 91.9 (new pitch)
Curve, change, and slider velocities pretty stable

Like I said, I saw one start. I noticed the drop in velocity and his offspeed pitches were not crisp. Also his fastball rarely had the same downhill trajectory.

Yeah I wasn't arguing - you have seen him pitch one more game than me this year...So you are ahead of me - I just pulled some niumbers to see how they looked... I did not look at pitch effects to look at movement

Where do you get those numbers? I would like to look at some guys on that site.

I just have them in my head - LOL

www.fangraphs.com

"joe capozzi ? @joecapMARLINS
Hearing that Ozzie will use Ryan Webb or Edward Mujica if there is a save situation today #Marlins"

That didn't take long.

I think Bell will recover from his poor start...
Mujica can't hold the job - and I don't know how Webb is doing

Closers have no imporatnce until yours closer blows up. Then they get important in a hurry.

exactly
we have been pretty sppoiled here Trevor then Bell
I watch other teams agonize over blown saves and I am glad we take the approach of having a good one - and like you say in PETCO it may be magnified because of all the close 1 run games

i'd rather agonize over the blown save than sit in despair from the 2nd or 3rd inning when the opposition scores a couple runs knowing my team doesn't have the bats to even make it TO the closer.

I am no longer sure what we are arguing
As one of the chief proponents of moving the fences to get more interesting games with more hitting and scoring I am clearly on record as wanting more offense and I have always said we need better talent on the field

we're arguing the merits of getting street as opposed to spending that 7mill on a bat ;)

we're broke and only have 15 bcks to last the month. we can either buy 1 filet Mignon or we can buy enough top ramen to last us the month. i'm going with the top ramen, beef or chicken flavor.

Who knows

You go get a $7M hitter and he takes one look at PETCO and folds (how many times have we seen that)
You get two $3.5M hitters and the impact is possibly dimiminished because they aren't impact players - he11 that's what we pay Headley and Venable isn't it...LOL

The truth of the matter is if you only spend what we spend it probably doesn't matter...you aren't going to win anyway

What did we pay Bell in 2010 - on a $37M payroll was it worth it?

Still really glad we didn't sign Bell and I expect him to bounce back as well...

What I don't get, is who do you think we could have gotten for 7 mill to really improve this offense? Any names?

It is funny, they got a former Padre in Bell to be the closer, now that he struggles sounds like they are going to two former Padres in Webb and Mujica

I see that Pablo Sandoval has Everth Cabrera disease
he broke the hamate bone on his left hand this year after breaking it on his RH last year
He will be out 5-6 weeks most likely
This is the kind of thing that changes teams and division races and why it makes it virtually impossible to PREDICT anything in baseball races - injury is ALWAYS a big part of who wins

Ouch!