What I Saw Last Night

One of the joys of being a baseball fan in the 21st century is that you can watch pretty much any major league game, anywhere. With mlb.tv and At Bat 13, every game is televised (subject to blackout provisions that are sometimes crazy). So here's what I watched last night:

• Nationals-Marlins: Jose Fernandez's second-to-last start. I've written about Fernandez before. He has a reasonable shot at NL Rookie of the Year (I still think Puig will get it) and is a shoo-in for NL Rookie Pitcher of the Year. He's only 21, and the Marlins don't want to risk breaking him down, so they've put an innings limit on him, making last night one of the last chances to see him. It was amazing. He gave up one infield single and a walk while striking out nine in seven innings. He threw 94 pitches and 71% were strikes. Until the seventh, he threw no more than four balls in any inning. He now has an ERA of 2.23 and has struck out 9.9 and walked 3.0 batters per nine innings. Here is a list of all pitchers 21 or younger who have an ERA under 2.40 who have struck out 9 or more and walked 3 or fewer per nine innings: Jose Fernandez.
• Dodgers-Reds: I caught the end of this one, seeing Aroldis Chapman nail down the save. He came in for the ninth inning. He threw 13 pitches: 12 fastballs and a slider. All but one of the fastballs were over 100 mph. The heart of the Dodgers' order--Yasiel Puig, Adrian Gonzalez, and Hanley Ramirez--swung and missed seven times, and had one called strike. The only contact they made was a foul ball by Gonzalez. Thirteen pitches, three swinging strikeouts.
• Red Sox-Yankees: Then, for something completely different, I watched four Yankee relievers give up nine runs in two innings, turning an 8-3 lead over the Red Sox to a 12-8 defeat.

And, as it turned out, I missed what was easily the best pitching performance of the night. And you are forgiven if you didn't know what a Yusmeiro Petit was before last night.