"He was throwing nasty." - teammate Rafael Furcalon Kuo's performance tonight
Well, you gotta feel happy for the "Comeback Kid", especially after the impressive performance he put up tonight. Facing arguably the NL's best team (seeing 3 guys in the lineup with 100's RBI's is mind boggling!) and with their team lead in the NL West down to 1/2 game, Kuo came through for the Dodgers in a big way: pitching 6 innings of shutout ball, K'ing 7, while walking 3. Although Kuo struggled a bit in the first inning - walking 2 batters, he was able to escape unscathed, thanks in part to C Martin throwing out Jose Reyes trying to swipe third base. After settling down, Kuo was commanding his breaking ball effectively, mixing it up with his 94-97 mph cheese. Furcal played tremendous defense behind Kuo as well. The last of the 3 hits given up by Kuo was a questionable call, as 3B Betemit was unable to make a play on a groundball that could have been fielded. Helped by the longball, the offense gave Kuo plenty of run support (5 runs). After losing his first 5 games in blown relief appearances over the past 2 seasons, Kuo finally nailed down his first career win in his first career ML start.
With his tremendous showing tonight, the Dodger's Manager - Grady Little, immediately announced that Kuo would start against the Chicago Cubs on Thursday. WAY TO GO KUO!!
Box/Recap
Hopefully Wang can duplicate Kuo's success tomorrow when he goes against the Orioles.
Minors:
Jacksonville lost game 2 of their series, 4-2 to Montgomery. Hu was 0-4 with a RBI. Box
Amateur:
Taiwan beat rival Japan 1-0 in the Asian Youth Championships semifinals. Taiwan will seek redemption as it will face South Korea in the championship game on Saturday. JIA YO!!
3 comments:
WOW! Great job Kuo. Im so proud of him. Im also proud of our boys for beating Japan and making it to the finals. Lets hope play well against South Korea in the championship. JIAYO!
Starting role is better for Kuo, if his arm can handle it. Like Furcal said, as a reliever, he walks too many people, which is a big no no for a reliever. But as a starting pitcher, he gets a chance to work around the jitters and gain control of his pitches.
As one critic says, Kuo's problem has always been his health and the ability to throw strikes. If he can conquer these two problems, a lefty who can throw 97mph heater will be a tour de force for the Dodgers years to come.
When he walked his first batter, I was like "uh, here we go again!" But I'm glad Martin bailed him out with the throw to third and that he settled down from there. 6 scoreless innings from his first ML start, can't ask for more than that. Great job!
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