Around the Horn: August8, 2012

Raleigh’s second homer of the night was the 100th of his career and it was the fourth time he’s homered from both sides of the plate in the same game. It’s always amazing to remember that on top of how incredible he is behind the plate and how productive he is as a hitter, he is also a switch-hitter. The notorious ‘Big Dumper’ has come out of the gate hot this season too. These homers tied him with Aaron Judge for second most in the league at seven and his two stolen bases have been a welcome surprise. He’s one of the best catchers in baseball.

Muñoz has been electric to start the season. This save was his seventh, which trails only Robert Suarez for most in the league, and he’s yet to allow an earned run. His stuff remains top notch and there are few closers that are more trustworthy at this moment than Muñoz is.

This was Miller’s best start of the season by far. It was a bit of a throwback start for him, throwing 50% fastballs – more than twice as often as any other pitch – and continuously challenging the Reds’ hapless lineup in the strike zone. His command still wasn’t crisp though and he’ll have to find some more consistency with both his splitter and knuckle-curve before he’s back to the elite level he was pitching at down the stretch last season. Also, he was pulled with just 78 pitches despite largely cruising. He talked about some residual soreness after his last start, so maybe that’s why he was pulled early. He’ll have a tough test next time out against the Red Sox in Fenway Park.

The Mariners had stretched out a five-run lead and seemed to be cruising before the Reds and Encarnacion-Strand made it interesting in the seventh inning with a little rally. That was a big hit for Encarnacion-Strand too as he was trapped in an 0-for-14 skid in what’s been a disastrous season so far. He’s only a part-time player at the moment, starting just three of the Reds’ last five games and shouldn’t be on any fantasy radars unless his playing time picks up again.

This game got off to an inauspicious start when Julio Rodríguez reached on an error by Elly De La Cruz on the first pitch of the game, advanced to second on a wild pitch by Martinez soon thereafter, and later came around to score. Still, Martinez was nowhere close to sharp in this one. He left far too many pitches over the middle of the plate and the Mariners made him pay with plenty of hard contact. They had 11 hard-hit balls in total and Martinez didn’t have a single one-two-three innings. He’s scheduled to face the Marlins in his next start coupled with a game in Coors Field in what looks to be an unfortunate pairing for a two-start week.

It was nice to see the strikeouts finally come for Pfaadt after he’s had a great start to the season in terms of run prevention without missing many bats. Pfaadt can sometimes struggle to generate whiffs as predominantly a sinker-sweeper right-handed pitcher because the other team will often stack their lineup with left-handed batters and mostly neutralize those two offerings. The Marlins did just that in this game as seven of their nine hitters were lefties, but Pfaadt was able to cut through them with his changeup. While the pitch has been inconsistent in the past, Pfaadt has made a meaningful effort to incorporate more changeups in his game to have a better plan of attack against lefties and it worked here. He commanded it well low and out of the zone as it forced five whiffs and tons more ugly swings that produced weak contact. He’s scheduled to face the Rays in his next start.