Joe Blanton: How does this happen?

[Brent Maguire]

He was never good to begin with and never had very good stuff. His change up is his one decent off speed pitch and even that has gotten worse.

 

I think it's a matter of pitching in the AL full time again after seeing his stuff decline. His command of his pitches has been absolutely atrocious as well. 

 

I didn't like the signing but I didn't think he would be a 6 ERA pitcher. I thought a high 4's ERA was the best case for him but he has been miserable. 

[Hollyw00d]

Its incredible, its almost as if he's trying to give up hits and homeruns. Like any AAA pitcher giving a reasonable effort can do better. He's completely fallen off the map and is literally just a pitching machine now

[Second Base]

The thing about Blanton is that he "survived" earlier in his career because of his durability and ability to pound the lower portion of the zone on the corners with 92-94 mph fastballs.  He always had a "good enough" curveball and change up.  

 

Now his fastball is 2-4 mph softer, which hurts his change up.  He's missing his spots, leaving the ball up and over the plate and his curveball has lost it's bite.  Basically, there's nothing left that's appealing about Blanton.  He can try to be more deceptive and adjust like other pitchers do, but he's never been deceptive and still isn't.  

 

The only way Blanton becomes deceptive is if he completely alters his release and starts throwing like Weaver or drops down to sidearm.  His days of throwing over the top and getting away with it ended 4 years ago.  It's nothing to be ashamed of.  He had a good little run and made his million.  But the time has come to either change or hang them up unless he wants to play in AAA/AA.

[Oz27]

It's pretty simple really. You take a pitcher who had repeatedly shown over the past few years how terrible he was, bring him into a tougher league, give him a contract that was probably five times as high as anyone else had given him and this was what was bound to happen.

 

The funny thing was I didn't hate the signing before the terms came out. When I assumed it was no more than a 1 year/$2mil deal, I thought there were worse depth signings. And that's all any of us thought he could possibly worse. This is one of those deals that sounded completely ridiculous at the time and lived up to what seemed likely on face value.