Kevin Tapani 3.0

[wombat_socho]

Nice article on Kevin Slowey by LaVelle Neal III. Slowey is getting compared a lot to Radke, because they are very similar pitchers, but in fact he's also very similar to Kevin Tapani, who for some reason tends to get overlooked by people who write about the 1991 team, probably because Jack Morris used up all the oxygen in the pitching staff...anyway, bulldog pitchers like this don't get a lot of respect from the managers, coaches, scouts and writers since they don't have the flame-throwing velocity of a Clemens or a trick pitch. They also, according to Bill James, don't tend to have long careers compared to the power pitchers, but I think there's a lot to be said for guys like Tapani and Radke and Slowey that take the ball every fifth day, go out there, and throw strikes for seven, maybe eight innings until the closer comes in to nail it down. I think baseball would be a lot more fun to watch if there were more guys like this and fewer guys with 90+ fastballs but no control.
(Aaron Gleeman)