Quote:
Originally Posted by Chiefspants
Meh. Wade admitted himself that he mostly f's around in the Spring. He'll spend entire games throwing only cutters or tinkering with his fastball. Not gonna panic until we see that diminished velo during the season.
|
It's also week 3 - the notorious 'dead arm' period.
Not everyone gets it, but for the vast majority of pitchers that do, week 3 is usually where you see it.
Not surprising at all that he had a little lower velocity early on as he's breaking the rust free and then after a couple weeks, it dropped. He'll fight through the dead arm and come back somewhere near where he was last year.
Reliever volatility and general aging curves for relief pitchers do suggest that he'll probably lose a tick of velocity this year over last, but probably no more than a half mph or so.
The only thing that would really worry me is that it's that power cutter that makes Davis pretty unique and so effective. There are maybe 3-5 guys that can get a cutter into the mid-90s and all of them are friggen nails (Betances is the other that springs immediately to mind). If he does lose a mph or so, that cutter goes from otherwordly to merely very good and at that point he may be closer to mortal.
He'll still be damn good, but probably closer to the Kenley Jansen sort of "goddammit, how are we going to hit him?" rather than "well **** this, why am I even bringing a bat to the plate?"