Edinson Volquez Cameo Creates Believers

The Edinson Volquez Fan Club

If you don’t know by now, I am the President of the Edinson Volquez fan club.  It’s just to hard to hate on a player that everyone hates on.  In his Pittsburgh Pirates debut, Edinson Volquez shut down the Chicago Cubs.  The performance wasn’t enough as the Bucs fell 3-2 and missed the opportunity at an Opening Series sweep.

But in a game that had more than its share of typical 2013 Pirates frustrations.   Starling Marte bunted on his own…with two strikes.  Jason Hammel looked like an early Cy Young candidate.  Blah, blah, blah.

Apr 3, 2014; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Pittsburgh Pirates relief pitcher Edinson Volquez (36) delivers a pitch against the Chicago Cubs during the seventh inning at PNC Park. The Cubs won 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

But the story of the day was Volquez Power entering the game and shocking Pirates fans who couldn’t figure it out.  Just ook at the left Under Armour spike pointing directly at Tony Sanchez!  Bea-u-tiful!

We knew the right hander with the crooked hat was going to pitch well.  We saw enough of it late in spring to realize that he was getting close.  We detailed every pitch of Volquez’s final outing against the Yankees.  If you read it, you might have started believing too.

The Bucs bullpen was worked a little bit too much–sort of hard to believe so early in the season, but whatever.   Hoss Rayburn is certainly grumpy tonight in the corner of heaven where old school pitchers hang out in heaven.

In his two innings of work, Volquez gave up a single as he fired 28 pitches, with 21 of them going for strikes.  The heater had late life and touched well into the 90s.  No walks were issued.  The change is as filthy as ever.  And as has been stated repeatedly, the focus for #VolquezPower is fastball command.  It showed up big time as 14 of the 15 pitches went for strikes and the mixture of speeds kept the Cubs hitters off balance.  (BrooksBaseball.net)

The outing was especially unique because he kept the ball down in the zone most of the time.  We see only one pitch in the upper middle portion of the strike zone.  The people who doubted Ray Searage should be ashamed.  Of course, we were one of those early on too, because it’s just easier to bitch and we just didn’t think there was much ‘stuff’ left in his arm for Ray to work with.  Boy were we wrong.

But enough gushing.  It was two innings and right now, Volquez is on the right track.  We still feel the pace at which he pitches is too slow and the Cardinals are certainly going to be a big test, but in the past two outings-progress has been made on the E.V.Project.

The price of the Volquez Fan Club membership just went up.

VolquezFever.com is about to go live!