[baseball3]

ALL hitters looked overmatched against Slowery until the 6th !! I do think part of it was due to the widened strike zone as the hitters had to expand, especially with 2 strikes. Frazier, Thomas, Mendez and Dlugach were absoutely HOSED on their 3rd called strikes. They all walked away with an amazement of the 3rd strike called that had the look, "there is NO WAY I would swing at that pitch, let's move on"................Slowery is the REAL DEAL, I would like to see the challenge of him facing the guys you mentioned with a REAL strike zone, but, YES, he was overpowering to ALL those hitters!!

p.s........I think Rameriez looked overmatched partially due to his having missed 5 or 6 games of seeing live pitching. Hamstring injury.............the 2 strike ground out to 2B and Frazier's 2-strike sac fly were fantastic AB's. Mejia and Thomas got first pitch fastballs in the 6th and both turned on them with authority. I think that's how to get a guy like Slowery, EARLY in the count, he's always around the plate. I think hitters have to be aggressive early in the count because he throws a LOT of strikes..............However, he was simply throwing fastballs by our hitters, with the attitude of here it is, there it goes, give me the next batter !!!

I sat in front of him on Thursday night's game (as he was charting for his outing the next day) and spoke with him quite a bit. He was PUMPED about the game, very engaging young man with an understanding of his skills. It was his 22nd birthday on Thursday night and when asked what he was doing after the game, he said, "there's no time to celebrate any birthday, I've got a 10:35 start in the morning and I need to be ready to go"..............DEDICATION, maturity, understanding................he'll be in the bigs for a long time !!!