[horseofcourse]

Good read I found on Tomlin....


Consider what I said in my last column with respect to Josh Tomlin:

I think this is Josh Tomlin’s ceiling. I think Josh Tomlin can pitch Exactly This Well. He may have some differences based on chance fluctuations, but I think Tomlin is a Finished Product.

So there you have it: Josh Tomlin’s ceiling is a guy who can take a no-hitter against the most potent offensive lineup in baseball into the 7th inning after retiring 18 hitters in a row. How droll.

This, of course, is completely absurd. I did not realize this, but the last guy to no-hit the Yankees by himself did it before I was born and is now in the Hall of Fame. Obviously that’s a lot of incarnations of Yankees to go through, but it doesn’t take all that astute of a fan to recognize that the Yankees have had a premier offense for at least the last decade and a half, and to throttle them like that takes some real ability.

Here’s what I noticed as much as anything about Tomlin’s performance last night: every pitch appears to have a purpose. When he pounds Mark Teixeira inside, it is not solely because he thinks this is the best way to retire Mark Teixeira. In later plate appearances, he threw pitches that looked like they might bore in on Teixeira, then faded away instead. He would sometimes go to a spot several times in a row, then switch up and go there only once. He threw some pitches out of the strike zone that looked like he MEANT for them to be out of the strike zone. Will you swing if I put it just a little bit outside? Will you swing if I put is just a little MORE outside? No? Well, how about if I throw it THIS hard? What if I only throw it THAT hard? I firmly believed while watching Tomlin that he knew WHERE he wanted to throw WHAT and HOW he wanted it to get there THIS time so that he could throw ANOTHER pitch NEXT time.

Now, obviously, Nick Swisher beat him on a ball for a two-run double, and he did actually walk a guy for the first time in a month or so. Tomlin is not The Perfect Pitcher. But he might have the perfect APPROACH to pitching: whether his arm can catch up to his brain might dictate whether he is Brian Bannister or Greg Maddux (whom I consider the ends of the spectrum of Thinking Pitchers: there are a lot of Brad Radkes and Randy Joneses and John Tudors and Eric Shows in between). In a sense, though, his most impressive inning was probably not something in the 2nd-through-6th range when he gave up nothing whatsoever, but rather the first, when Derek Jeter reached on a gaffe by Lonnie Chisenhall and Tomlin wanted little part of Curt Granderson with a runner on base. With two men aboard, all Tomlin did was saw through Teixeira, Alex Rodriguez, and Robinson Cano, who are, by the way, pretty good hitters. When he did that, I relaxed CONSIDERABLY.

So, apparently, did Tomlin.

(Bat may have even been better last night...MY INPUT!)