Nieve Is A Spark?

Fernando Nieve looked more like Cy Young today, either that or the Yankees looked like the Nationals, and after an embarrasing loss, under extroadinary circumstances, he really came up huge. He was locating pitches and was confident, and Ken Rosenthal told Joe Buck during the game that he talked to a scout before the game who said he did not have the stuff or confidence, and then during the game when Nieve was dominating, that same scout told Rosenthal that he looked like, and I quote "a whole new pitcher".

When I saw Nieve pitch for Houston in the Spring versus the Mets, I thought he was a guy with good stuff, who had to find a way to locate it and be confident with it. He was then DFA'd, and soon after brought in by Omar, who has a knack for bringing in guys for nothing and getting value out of them (EX= Tatis, Sheffield, Maine, Perez, Livan, Omir Santos, it really is endless).

How did Nieve do it? Lets break one at- bat down.

Nieve was throwing fastballs outside to start the count, this is Johnny Damon at-bat.

Here Nieve throws the outside first pitch

fastball to Damon, to start the count. Painting it on the outside part of the plate, and setting Damon up for the next pitch. Note how his shoulders and his entire body looks as he is approaching the ball.

He was using the fastball often, and getting up to 95 at times with it.

See how he is cheating towards the outsides this time, which throws him off balance and causes him to get into an 0-2 hole, as Nieve is locating his pitches very effectively.

In this pitch he would come with a low and away fastball for the third straight pitch.

This was another outside fastball, which as you can see Damon did nto exp

ect as he was squared to hit an inside pitch and Nieve came away and it caused him to foul it off down the left field line.

I will skip to the last pitch of the at-bat, the count was 2-2, he called an outside fastball a ball, and an inside fastball a ball. After going with an outside changeup he came back with an outside fastball shown below.