Saturday, May 12, 2007

Strategy

You don’t spend much time on some games. They move fast and end quietly. You shrug them off as a bad night or a good pitcher. It’s usually a bit of both.

They don’t matter for long. Matt DeSalvo goes tonight and he is coming off a great start against the Mariners on Monday.

The New York Times has an interesting story in today’s paper about how much DeSalvo reads – he is currently working on Confucius – and how he is able to apply it to life and baseball.

The story sparked a memory of a Spring Training piece written in the Journal News by Peter Abraham. Back in March, DeSalvo was reading the English translation of “The Book of Five Rings,” which is a 362-year-old manual written by Miyamoto Musashi on military strategy and sword fighting.

It begins: “Strategy is the craft of the warrior…”

Every lesson applies to pitching. The battle between pitcher and hitter is pure and beautiful and violent and nasty.

DeSalvo will have a ball and a glove, but the strategy is the same as it was 362 years ago.

4 comments:

Ben said...

I can't wait to see him pitch again. I have a feeling he's a lot like Wang -- he won't dwell on mistakes. (He didn't make any last time . . . .) Seeing the rookies excel has taken the edge off a sometimes frusttrating opening month.

Todd Drew said...

I agree that DeSalvo seems a lot like Wang. The mental part of the game is so important and they both have a good handle on it.

Jessica Lee said...

Wang should be able to talk about Confucius with DeSalvo.This is good topic to make a new friend.I also can't wait how many good young pitchers Yankees will have.WoW!!!Sometimes they just need a chance to show theirselves.

Zachary Lesser said...

If DeSalvo has a few more outings like this, and Rasner keeps pitching well, I'd like to see one of them go to the bullpen once Rocket joins the team. It's still too early to tell if Hughes will do well this year, but the rotation will probably shape up like:

Wang
Pettitte
Mussina
Clemens
Hughes

which would give us a much-improved pen with Rasner and/or DeSalvo in there. Unless the Yanks decide (unwisely, in my view) that the emergence of DeSalvo and Rasner allows them to send Hughes back to the minors for more "seasoning," which was their initial plan.