Other quotes:
Lou Piniella:

“the best Spring Training start I’ve seen here of any of the Spring Training pitchers who’ve faced us.” “He made it look relatively easy,” Piniella said. “Hard sinker, pitched inside, had a nice breaking ball. He made it look easy. He was impressive.”

Redmond:

“Those last two innings, he took it to another level. He was phenomenal.”

Redmond again:

“He probably threw three sliders all day,” the catcher said. “He had a hard sinker and fastball, That was my plan, because if it came around to facing the lineup a third time, he’d have still another pitch to go to. If you get deep into the game, you might need that third pitch to start showing batters. Today, nobody could go up there to take pitches. They had to swing, because he was pounding the strike zone.”

OK, that’s complete BS. As I commented yesterday, Carmona threw a lot of sliders. Either Redmond is lying or he thinks that his “hard sinker” is 84 mph and breaks away from righties. Or he describes that as his changeup.

Yo likey mucho

Gasp

This is great and all, but who the hell is get us through the 8th after Fausto’s seven shutout innings?

From Castro:

Perez isn’t letting himself get overly excited about taking over the closing duties. “There’s so much emphasis put on the ninth inning compared to any other inning in the game,” he said. “But you can lose a game in the eighth just as much as you can in the ninth. And there are times when it’s easier to work the ninth than the eighth, depending on where you are in the lineup.”

That’s refreshing to read.

Isn’t this the way it goes? One of our pitchers figures it out in a year we need him the least?

Rabble rabble.

I know we all want to be excited, but this is useless spring training junk. Whether Redmond believes he was better in that start than he was in 2007 means nothing. Check back in November and we’ll know whether he was better.

OK, I think I figured out what must have happened. I had mentioned that Carmona had only thrown a couple of changeups. My guess is that in Redmond’s excitement, he misspoke and said “slider” instead of “changeup.” And Castro’s sub Singer either isn’t that familiar with what Carmona throws or wasn’t paying close enough attention to clarify Redmond’s remarks.

I feel teased…

Buster Olney opens his (Insider) blog with a discussion of Fausto today. The general theory developing seems to be that Carmona is learning not to follow crap with crap to avoid the big blowup inning. Willis preached this, too, but Belcher says Fausto’s done it mostly on his own:

“I’ll be perfectly honest with you — he has done it himself,” said Belcher. “I have spent minimal time with Fausto. I think this is just a cumulative effect of the last couple of years. … Everything that he’s been taught and coached up on, from a mental side as far as maintaining his mind in a moment, that’s all been laid out for him. The [coaching] resources have been there for him. He has allowed it to finally take hold within him, and he’s making those adjustments on his own.”