Baseball College

The bottom line for me is, I don’t care what anyone says, if Jason Marquis throws 30 sinkers in a row to start the game, he’s gonna get hit hard because hitters know what’s coming. He needs to mix up his pitches more in the early going so he doesn’t get knocked around so much. This will create two remedies:

1. Hitters will be off balance more often, because they don’t know what’s coming, thus hopefully reducing the amount of missiles that fly into the gaps and over the wall.

2. He won’t be in as much trouble (if he can do any kind of locating) which means he won’t feel the need to throw his sinker 102 MPH, thus elevating it into most hitters’ happy zone, compounding the problem.

Establishing a pitch is OK, but I think that it is a bit extreme in Marquis’ case.  His sinker is not good enough to overpower or fool hitters if they know it’s coming.

Also, his curve ball/slider isn’t exactly stellar.  Would it be possible to bring back the change up he once threw?

Sure, you’re gonna have bad days every once in awhile, but when it’s more notable that you have a good day as opposed to a bad day, it might be time to change something.