I am sorry this is late -- I forgot to submit it before rushing off to work early.

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Fernando Nieve (3-0, 4 G, 3 GS, 1.31 runs average, 5.18 IP/G; 3 quality starts) @ Braden Looper (0-1, 5 GS, 7.18 runs average, 5.26 IP/GS; 2 quality starts)

Sometimes the most quiet of moves make the loudest noise once they hit the big leagues; enter Fernando Nieve. The slider-balling righty was claimed off of waivers by the Mets in spring training, and has provided phenomenal performances in the absence of Jon Maine and Oliver Perez. A lot of times, we spend so much time complaining about injury-plagued times, or times wrought with ineffectiveness, that we forget the benefits of hard times: sometimes a player takes the chance provided to him during those times and turns in special performances.

After a troublesome stretch, Looper pitched a quality start in his last outing, hopefully a sign of things to come for the right-hander. The splitter expert is throwing his fastball(s) much less frequently in 2009 than 2008, leaving his splitter to fill an incredibly prominent role. With Bush out to injury and Parra to ineffectiveness, Looper is the next Brewers pitcher on the slippery slope to accountability, and although the veteran is pitching as a #4 starter for the Brewers, the growing sense seems to be that the Brewers need him to reclaim the approach that made him one of the top #3 starts in 2008 NL.

Johan Santana (2-3, 5 GS, 6.24 runs average, 6.06 IP/GS; 3 quality starts) @ Mike Burns (0-1, 1 GS, 6.32 runs average, 5.70 IP/GS; 0 quality starts)

Where did the best pitcher in baseball go? In the midst of injury problems plaguing the Mets’ rotation, their #1 ace, the most valuable pitcher in the league, fell off of the face of the earth, replaced by someone with much more human numbers. I suppose we cannot always expect aces to be effective all the time, or to have their best stuff all the time, or to consistently dominate – hardly anyone is that good; but after all of these years, I guess it’s just surprising to see Santana put together a prolonged stretch of tough starts.

Mr. Replacement gets yet another chance to rest up the Brewers’ bullpen, and to fill a void, to potentially keep the universe from collapsing in on itself – or, at the very least, the Brewers’ rotation. The righty could probably serve as a role model for the remainder of the rotation: he throws his fastball frequently, and therefore relegates his secondary pitches to their rightful status as secondary pitches. This pitcher prefers secondary pitchers of the curving and “splitting” variety; on the verge of turning 31 (fittingly, on the day the Bastille was raided), Burns once again receives a shot to grab his career, and to steady it. To force the issue, staying in the major leagues.

Mike Pelfrey (1-2, 5 GS, 8.18 runs average, 5.06 IP/GS; 0 quality starts) @ Yovani Gallardo (3-2, 5 GS, 2.20 runs average, 6.54 IP/GS; 3 quality starts)

I really, really like FanGraphs. Fantastic website, with nice, brief, thought provoking articles, and some of the best scouting-stats on the planet (their plate discipline and pitch selection stats are incredibly useful for displaying the actual nuts and bolts of baseball performance). However, my only complaint is that they fail to distinguish between the 2-seam and 4-seam fastballs in their pitch selection sections; I understand that while they could not possibly capture all the instances of a pitcher doing something different with his approach on a certain pitch in a certain situation, posting one simple average fastball fails to capture the true approach of a pitcher such as Mike Pelfrey, who will feature a couple of different fastballs, at different velocities, different movements, which explains exactly how he throws his fastball nearly 80% of the time.

Gallardo provides a perfect example for how pitch counts should be viewed with young pitchers. In the first case, we should view skeptically pitch counts that approach 130. But, we should not equate that skepticism with condemning working deep into ballgames. And, we should not equate that skepticism with a certain “hard” pitch count that is always good – for instance, 100 pitches in 7 innings is fantastic, passable in 6, and awful in 5. 115 pitches in 5 is unacceptable, in 6 innings is awful, and in 7 is passable. Working into the 8^th, recording outs into the 8^th, on fewer than 120 pitches? That’s very strong. What I would like to see more of is equating pitch counts with efficiency in actual big league games.

I hate to see a young arm consistently work through 5 innings on 100 pitches much more than I am concerned with a young arm that works between 7-8 innings on 110-120 pitches. While hard pitch counts in some cases can help pitchers, I feel as though the pitch count movement should gravitate towards rolling pitch counts, which lead managers to pull pitchers earlier when they are struggling to finish 5 innings in fewer than 90 pitches, and encourage managers to allow youngsters to work into (and through) the 8^th into the 120 pitch range.