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The Best Pitcher in the Major Leauges is Edinson Volquez

Baseball

by edwzipper on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 10:05am

Won his 10th game of the season last night in the Bronx with seven innings of two run baseball. Struck out five and walked one. He has two losses on the year. One, when Tim Hudson beat him 2-0. The other when Dusty Baker lost his mind and ran Volquez into the 18th inning of a game in San Diego on one days rest. Even then, he would have been out of the inning but for a Reds error (typical) which kept it going and opened the door for the Padre win.

For the year he has thrown 95 innings Kd 110 BBd 45 while allowing just 66 hits. His ERA? Still a Maddux-in-his-prime-in-his-best-seasons-esque 1.71. He has allowed more than two earned runs in just one start this season. And that was a start in which he allowed three runs, two of which arguably should have been unearned as the official scorer in Florida turned an obvious error into a hit.

His fastball hits 97 or 98 when he wants it to. He deals it generally around 94. His changeup should be illegal. When he throws it close to how he wants to, it is unhittable. He also has a rapidly improving curveball.

He is just 24, and while Josh Hamilton is tearing up the AL, the deal that sent Hamilton to Texas and brought Volquez to Cincy is one the Reds would do 100 times out of 100.

Color the Yankees suitably impressed (comparisons to Pedro and all that jazz).

As for Reds fans? We’re stunned. Older-timers than me compare his season so far to Jim Maloney in Maloney’s best years. For my generation, this is a replay of Mario Soto’s 1982 and 1983 seasons. Only better. There probably has not been a Reds pitcher this dominant for this long ever. If he comes remotely close to matcing this the rest of the way, I don’t care how far out of first the Reds end up (and it will be FAR), Volquez should be the NL Cy Young.

He is worth making an effort to see, either in person or on TV. If he were wearing a Red Sox uniform, ESPN would have devoted an entire channel to him at this point. As it stands, since he is in Cincinnati, while his year has certainly not been ignored, it is also true that it is flying under a lot of radars. If you like baseball, don’t let it fly under yours.