Chart Observations: BOS vs. LAA

• Tim Wakefield started for the Red Sox and featured a knuckler at 67-67, a fastball at 72-73 and a curveball at 58-60 (seriously). He struggled to command the knuckler and it was up in the zone quite a bit. He got hit around, but you expect this from Wakefield. A back-of-the-rotation starter who will lay down some clunkers when the knuckler has a bad day and will have some dominant games when the knuckler dances.
• Matt Palmer threw brilliantly after the first 2 innings. Palmer will not overwhelm you with his stuff, as he sits at 86-88 with his cutter, 86-89 with his 2-seam, 74-77 with his curveball and 82-83 with his changeup. He also dropped down sidearm to throw a curveball to Mike Lowell to end the game and that was at 74. He showed plus command and both his cutter and 2-seam have enough side-to-side movement to make it very difficult for hitters to consistenly put the barrel on the ball. His curveball is a tick above average because of the difference in velocity and his ability to command it. He threw only 2 changeups. Palmer is likely a back of the rotation starter (likely a 5), but is more likely to be one of those emergency starters, the ones who spend a lot of time in AAA and come up when the team is in a bind.
• Hunter Jones is not a major league pitcher in my opinion. He featured a fastball at 86-87 and a slider at 73-76. He doesn't have great command of these average major league offerings and with that type of stuff, you need great command. I don't know if there is much of an upside to him, I think the best he can hope for is to be the 2nd left hander in someone's bullpen.
• Daniel Bard made his major league debut last night and showed a fastball anywhere from 93-98, a slurvy slider at 77-82 and a changeup at 88. He sat between 94-96 with the fastball and showed good command of it. However, both his off-speed pitches are average at best. The slider flashed as an above average offering, but he struggles to command it. The changeup did very little the 1 time he threw it. He is primarily a FB-SL reliever and he features plus velocity, but he has never had good command, so I think his upside is that of a set-up man and is more likely to settle into a middle relief role.
• Takashi Saito showed a fastball at 88-91, a slider at 80-81 and a curveball at 75. He didn't have as much stuff as I thought he did and may end up being over-exposed as a set-up man. This may have been just a bad day (they were losing, so who knows how that affected him), but his slider was kind of flat and his curveball was just average. He has above average command of his stuff, but the end may be near.