McLaren: "We know why HoRam blows"

In an astounding discovery today at MarinersLabs, Head researcher John McLaren revealed the source of Horacio Ramirez's struggles facing major league hitters:

"What we're looking for is a location of the fastball and a differential of the fastball and changeup," McLaren said. "He's pitched some good games for us. We haven't given up on him. I know a lot of people are down on him. He still believes in himself. 'Chavy' is going to try some things with him and see if we can get him back on track."

Checking the recent logs at MLB.com's Gameday feature, SuperGenius McLaren is clearly correct in his assertion that HoRam is currently suffering from the malady of too little separation in speed between "fastball" and anything else. I mean, those radar guns were just lying when they detected such speeds as 87-91 (mostly 89) for fastballs, and 77-83 (mostly 83) for offspeed junk. To throw any slower and get the pitches to cross the plate, Ramirez will have to learn a knuckler or an eephus pitch, and fast.

Location? Well, you've got me there, but if Raffy Chaves can fix command issues for guys with hittable, non-major league quality stuff, in only one between-starts session, well, we shouldn't have given up on White Flag so soon. And maybe that Morrow kid could use a little instruction.

Sure, sure, this is McLaren blustering to the press to deflect well-deserved criticism and blame away from HoRam's tender ego, lest we make him ineffective by deriding him. May it never be.

Baseball hell.

The answer, my friend, is HoRam in the wind....