If you go over to milb.com's homepage as of this writing, you'll note that the first two featured performances yesterday came from our pitchers.
Colorado Springs: W 5-1
The good news in this one was that four Sky Sox pitchers combined on a no-hitter. The bad news would be that it took four of them to do it. Franklin Morales' six walks and only five innings are a good indication of how much he was laboring , unhittable that he may have been. Teekalong asked in the gamethread discussion yesterday why I would think Morales needed to go back to AAA to develop while Greg Reynolds could further his developing at the MLB level. It simply has to do with a lack of efficiency on Morales' part costing the team more in bullpen usage. Reynolds at this point both gives the Rockies about as good a chance to win that Morales was, but promises to eat more innings. Having four inefficient pitchers -adding in Jimenez, Mark Redman and 2008's Jeff Francis- was absolutely destroying any hope of holding leads by overextending the pen early this season. Reynolds, will take a lot of that burden away.
What's more, as the diary by NovaO pointed out, Morales' deficiencies have a lot more to do with mechanical adjustments that needed to be made, whereas Reynolds' task is just to learn to avoid mistakes. I think the two are apples and oranges in other words, and still think calling-up Greg was as good an option as we had at the time. Of course, you can go back to the offseason, when decent experienced pitching was more available, and argue that the team made its mistakes then to leave us in this position. That is an argument that I can certainly see has its merits in hindsight.
Chris George, Matt Daley and Steven Register finished Morales' start, allowing three more walks in the next four innings, but that was it. Ian Stewart doubled twice, over the six games of the current homestand he has nine hits, seven for extra bases, three walks and just three K's in 25 PA's. He's both scored and driven in eight runs and he's on pace to hit the century mark in both.
Tulsa: Off
Modesto: W 11-0
When I stress the importance of efficiency, Aneury Rodriguez provides a great example. He was the sole pitcher in a complete game one hitter. 107 pitches over nine innings has a lot more value than the 90 over five that Morales threw. Rodriguez struck out six and walked two, and the one hit was just a bloop double according to this eye-witness account. Michael McKenry had two doubles as the DH and drove in three. Anthony Jackson also doubled twice and scored twice and Matt Repec hit his first homerun of the season. Michael Paulk, Nick Haley and Nelson Robledo got aboard three times each via walk or single, and Daniel Mayora added two singles as well.