More Pitchers

Roy Halladay is back. He had a down year in 2004 due to poor management of his arm; the dude is a horse and he was used as such. As a result Ted Lilly was forced to take the spot as staff ace in '04, and while he put up decent numbers he is nowhere even near the caliber of Halladay. When Halladay is healthy - which he should remain, all year - he has Cy Young stuff. Of course, this post is in response to his impressive outing tonight - 9IP, 3H, 1BB. 2nd Complete Game of the year, which almost worries me about his shoulder fatigue coming back. However, Halladay is rare in that he tends to get stronger as the innings progress; you'd think that with batters seeing him a second, third, fourth time he'd start giving some up; tonight he retired the last 10 batters in a row.

Mark Buehrle is the most under-rated pitcher in the Big Leagues. He has amazing control and makes batters look foolish when he's on. If you saw his game a couple weeks ago against Seattle - he gave up 1 run in the 9th inning, and 3 hits I think - he was dominating. It was great to watch him strike guys out with fastballs so high up in the zone they were at these guy's eyes. And he did it at least 4 times, while going ahead to get 12 K's that day.

Tim Hudson has the nastiest slider in the world. Right up there with Mariano Rivera's cutter. Thing is coming in on you, then all the sudden, about 10 feet before the plate, it breaks about 3 feet to the right and falls about a foot. You look pretty foolish reaching for that.