There is a special something in minor league baseball. I sat in the upper stands at Rochester’s wonderful Frontier Field last night pondering this, but I feel totally inadequate in my ability to put my finger on it. It isn’t tackiness – that isn’t quite right – and it isn’t purity – though there is certainly plenty of both of those. Baseball feels completely different when viewed from 8 dollar seats that are still close enough to see the glisten on the pitcher’s brim and the peeling corners of the many advertisements on the outfield fence. But don’t confuse this with a better experience. As my Yankee-loving girlfriend casually remarked as we walked back to the car, “There’s only so much minor league baseball I can take consecutively…and it’s one game”. I imagine that is the general consensus in the general public.

We arrived slightly late, having missed an uneventful first half inning, but just in time to see Jake Arrieta throw his first pitch. His first inning went by smooth enough: pop-up, fly ball, pop-up, but I noticed right away two things: he, like his two partners in the Big Three, seems to prefer pitching up in the zone. Dan over at Camden Crazies recently had a better look at Arrieta’s start at Fenway Park where he came to a similar conclusion. Over the course of the night, Arrieta got a grand total of 15 swings-and-misses, and of those I’m not sure how many came on his strongest pitch (the fastball), but compared to his totals (100 pitches, 61 strikes), 15 misses seems awfully low to me.

Speaking of the fastball, it was terrific. I’m not sure if the gun at Frontier Field was accurate, but it had Arrieta in the 92-94 range most of the game. When his perfect game was snapped with a ground ball through the left side and Arrieta quickly walked the next two batters to load the bases with 1 out in a scoreless game, he reached back for some extra juice and got it up to 96 (though the rumors claim it can touch 97). His location wasn’t great, but with that kind of velocity he can probably afford more mistakes.

However, let’s not dismiss his offspeed stuff. In the seventh, with his velocity waning and fatigue clearing becoming a factor, Arrieta made Danny Valencia look absolutely foolish with back to back curveballs, the second one dipping down to 69 mph. Needless to say, Valencia was out in front by about 10 minutes.

Bottom line: Arrieta was impressive. His command isn’t the greatest thing in the world, and his mechanics seem maybe a little jerky to me (though I read that his final college season at TCU his mechanics were messed up and resulted in a huge velocity loss, which I obviously didn’t see, so I assume that he’s fine mechanically), but his arm action is good and the results were there: 7 innings, 100 pitches, 3-12 GO/AO, 2 hits, 0 runs, 2 walks, 6 strikeouts.

The fact that Josh Perrault blew the game in the ninth and the offense was horrible (except for car-jumping Joey Gathright) does little to take away from my night. Oh, and speaking of the offense, I’ve seen Brandon Snyder play twice this year now and both times he’s just looked painfully overmatched with a big loopy swing. I’m not making any judgements on that, but he was completely the opposite of Arrieta in terms of performance. Blake Davis made a terrific up the middle stop in the seventh, but then let a fieldable ball get past him to lose the game in the ninth. The Tides looked mediocre. Except for Arrieta, that is.

(photo blatantly stolen)