Quote:
Originally Posted by Gozer
Plus, he leads the league in strikeouts. Not the best indicator of being a dominant pitcher (Halladay used to never get Ks, just groundouts) but it makes it way more fun to watch a game.
Plus in a bases loaded, no outs jam after an ump badly misses a call - it's nice to have a pitcher ring a guy up.
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Well a guy like Halladay has strikeout stuff, his MO is to throw stuff that hitters think they can hit, but really can't hit effectively to keep his pitch counts down so he can pitch late into the game every time out. Burnett still tends to end up having 110 pitches thrown in the 6th or 7th inning because of the number of strikeouts. The average strikeout is probably at least a 5 pitch at bat, and Halladay tends to be a guy who's thrown 100 pitches after facing 30 hitters.
I wonder with Burnett if he's more effective as the season wears on and it fatigues him a bit because he can get more break on his offspeed stuff and a bit more movement on the fastball. When he threw on 4 days rest against the Yankees he was great, and in his last two years has tended to be more effective in the second half after the innings started to get racked up. Most of the outings where he has problems tend to come early in the year it seems.