{"id":7391,"date":"2013-08-08T07:34:19","date_gmt":"2013-08-08T11:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com.\/?p=7391"},"modified":"2013-08-08T07:42:49","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T11:42:49","slug":"first-look-tanner-roark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=7391","title":{"rendered":"First Look: Tanner Roark"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tanner<\/a>

Tanner Roark living the dream. Photo via milb.com<\/p><\/div>\n

A few days ago I was playing amateur GM and ended up predicting the 8\/6\/13 roster moves<\/a>, where\u00a0Ross Detwiler<\/strong> was transfered to the 60-day DL and\u00a0Tanner Roark<\/strong> was called up<\/a> to provide some bullpen cover while Ross Ohlendorf<\/strong> is on the mend. \u00a0Roark’s body of work both this season and over the past few warranted his call-up, and his mixture of success both in the starter role and in a long-relief role in AAA make him the perfect candidate to replace Ohlendorf for the time being.<\/p>\n

A quick side note: whenever I see someone, after years and years of toiling in the minors, finally get the call-up I’m reminded of the storytelling of\u00a0Dirk Hayhurst<\/strong> in his 2nd book Out of My League<\/i>, where he described all the logistics and feelings of getting his first callup. \u00a0Of particular interest; the pay. \u00a0I’m sure Roark was compensated like a typical minor league veteran in AAA; probably making $1,500 a month or so (which was about what Hayhurst said he made). \u00a0Upon signing a MLB contract, you immediately start getting paid a pro-rated amount of a minimum MLB salary, which is $490,000 a season. \u00a0Well, you can quickly see that a guy getting called up immediately starts making significantly more money. \u00a0 30-40 TIMES more money. \u00a0More money per day in the majors than he was making in a month in the minors. \u00a0 So I say good for Roark and good for every guy who finally gets a shot at the bigs.<\/p>\n

Lets take a look at Roark’s first appearance… which came last night on 8\/7\/13<\/a> in relief of a curiously ineffective\u00a0Jordan Zimmermann<\/strong>, who needed 88 pitches to complete 4 innings as the Nats officially waved the white flag on the season, getting swept at home by the team they’re chasing for the division lead and falling to 15 1\/2 games out of first.<\/p>\n

Roark had a great MLB debut<\/a>. \u00a0He came in to face Atlanta’s 4-5-6 hitters and pitched a 1-2-3 inning. \u00a0He got a\u00a0Brian McCann<\/strong> to fly out on a relatively well struck ball, then badly jammed\u00a0Chris Johnson<\/strong> to get a simple grounder to short, and then got\u00a0Dan Uggla<\/strong> to reach for a first pitch fastball for an equally weak grounder to second. \u00a0Coming back out to face the bottom of the order he effectively jammed\u00a0BJ Upton<\/strong>, who flared a flyball into shallow center field that\u00a0Denard Span<\/strong> couldn’t quite come up with in a sliding catch attempt, then \u00a0he jammed\u00a0Andrelton Simmons<\/strong> to get a simple pop-up to first. \u00a0Lastly for his coup-de-gras, he induced a popped-up bunt attempt from his opposite number\u00a0Kris Medlen<\/strong>, made a diving catch and then doubled off Upton, who was (I guess) running on the play.<\/p>\n

Not a bad debut, at all.<\/p>\n

The scouting reports on Roark said that he’d work mid 90s in relief, low 90s as a starter, and that’s exactly what we saw. \u00a0Per the pitch f\/x data<\/a>, He threw 12 fastballs on the night which averaged 94.46, peaking at 95.52. \u00a0He only threw three sliders, bouncing the first and probably ruining his confidence in the pitch. \u00a010 of 15 pitches were for strikes, and that ratio should have been higher; his first batter he didn’t get a borderline call on the outside corner and the ump flat out missed a low strike. \u00a0He seemed to have pretty good movement on the 4-seamer (-7.10″ average horizontal movement, which for comparison purposes almost as much as Medlen, a guy who relies almost exclusively on his movement, got on his 2-seamer last night<\/a>). \u00a0He certainly worked the corners effectively, only really giving up one well hit ball (that to McCann, who benefitted from being way ahead in the count thanks to the ump’s missed strike calls). \u00a0You don’t have to throw 100mph if you can effectively work the ball inside and out.<\/p>\n

He was almost too effective; 15 pitches to get through 2 innings meant he didn’t really work much of his repertoire. \u00a0I’m sure he has at least a third pitch, but we never got to see it. \u00a0Roark’s spot in the order was up, and he was out (as he was being pinch hit for, I wondered internally when the last time Roark got an at-bat was. \u00a0Turns out he has 18PAs for Syracuse this summer; I didn’t realize the minor league pitchers got any at-bats).<\/p>\n

It was hard not to like what we saw from him last night. \u00a0Is he going to continue to be effective, can he stick in the majors? \u00a0Hard to tell. \u00a0Ian Krol<\/strong> giving up two hits and a walk in a third of an inning didn’t help his cause much, a similiarly ineffective appearance to his 7\/31 outing. \u00a0Fernando Abad<\/strong> has basically blown the last two games in which he’s appeared. \u00a0But these two guys are blessed as being left-handers, so they possess value that a righty does not, and may not really be candidates to make way once Ohlendorf comes off the D\/L. \u00a0So we’ll see.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Tanner, use some of that MLB meal money to go get a haircut! \u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

PS. \u00a0One more thought on this series since i’ve got nowhere else to put it; I’m disappointed we didn’t see retaliation of some sort last night for the BS of the night before. \u00a0I’m sorry; you HAVE to protect your best player out there, and i’m not surprised to hear reports and see evidence that\u00a0Bryce Harper<\/strong> was on edge last night with his own manager. \u00a0As\u00a0J.P. Santangelo<\/strong> succinctly pointed out; not protecting one of your own players can and does blow up clubhouses. \u00a0I think somebody on Atlanta needed to get hit last night (likely McCann). \u00a0I’m more than a little worried right now about the state of the clubhouse, given this lack of reaction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I was playing amateur GM and ended up predicting the 8\/6\/13 roster moves, where\u00a0Ross Detwiler was transfered to the 60-day DL and\u00a0Tanner Roark was called up to provide some bullpen cover while Ross Ohlendorf is on the mend. \u00a0Roark’s body of work both this season and over the past few warranted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[1921,188,1154,1920,1005,482,1560,1503,1695,43,970,51,1554,77],"class_list":["post-7391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-minorspitching","tag-andrelton-simmons","tag-bj-upton","tag-brian-mccann","tag-chris-johnson","tag-dan-uggla","tag-denard-span","tag-dirk-hayhurst","tag-fernando-abad","tag-ian-krol","tag-jordan-zimmermann","tag-kris-medlen","tag-ross-detwiler","tag-ross-ohlendorf","tag-tanner-roark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7391"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7403,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7391\/revisions\/7403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}