Know Thine Enemy: Athletics Nation
Who?
About a month away from turning 31, Cremer The Southpaw made his Major League debut on September 13th and beat the Kansas City Royals by allowing just one run over five and a third innings. The Royals managed four hits and a walk off him, and struck out four times. He's an interesting case, being out of baseball in '05 and '06 and playing independent ball for all of '08. But in between, and going back to when he was signed as an amateur free agent by the Rays in '03, he's done one thing consistently: strike out left-handed hitters.
In his minor league career, Cremer has thrown 508 innings and struck out 467. That's a rate of 8.3 batters per nine innings. He's also allowed just 1.2 base runners per inning. So why was he in the minors for so long?
At times, Cramer gives up hits in bunches. And at other times he struggles with control. So when both of those things happened at once, he'd implode. He's also, basically, a two-pitch guy--fastball, curveball. The fastball can cut sometimes, but that's all there is.
In his first start he threw 52% fastballs, 45% curves and so, apparently, just 3% "something else"...which he only threw to left-handed hitters. Probably a changeup that didn't register. We'll find out today. Should be an interesting one to watch.
This is an offense that Liriano should be able to chew up and spit out in about 150 minutes. Let's see how right I am.