Diamondbacks Spring Training Round-Up: Wade's Good

Quotes of the day

• "Yeah it helped out a lot I guess. It did feel a lot better and I was able to locate. It felt good. "It was good to get back out there and kind of have some success. I threw strikes and the ball was coming out good, so I'm happy."
  -- Wade Miley
• "He is building confidence, no question. He is getting more familiar with his team, his catchers. He just has to trust his stuff. He was facing a pretty good lineup today. They didn’t bite on a lot of his secondary stuff. He got in trouble, but he got out of it. He’s trying to get more consistent with his pitches. He’s close."
  -- Kirk Gibson on Randall Delgado

• "He just wasn't ready. We felt it was being counterproductive him being here. I think he was a little bit relieved, to be quite honest with you. We'll get him back on track. If you can't command your fastball, it's not going to cut it. He knows what he has to do. We'll get him down there, we'll get him on track, he'll make some adjustments and hopefully he'll relax a little and throw the baseball the way he's capable."
  -- Gibson on Tyler Skaggs

• "He’s an awesome player. He plays the game so dang hard and it’s fun to watch. He energizes the rest of the guys and you can’t help but just follow that... It’s not a fake hustle. He just plays as hard as he can. His talent speaks for itself. He’s going to continue to get better, too, because he wants to learn. He’s always talking to guys. It’s been fun getting to play with him and hopefully we’ll do it for a long time."
  -- Paul Goldschmidt on Adam Eaton

Non-story of the day

Needless to say, I nearly fell off my chair when the above popped up on my Google News feed. Why ever would the team have any interest in this? But it's on Yahoo, right? It must be true! Well... Turns out this was actually a story from last April, which suddenly got resurrected for no apparent reason. Fortunately, I didn't quite believe it, or rush to Tweet out a link. Climbing back onto my chair now, but wanted to give everyone a heads-up in case anyone else saw it, and panicked similarly...

Wade on way back

Almost nothing but good reports coming out of the morning's bullpen session for Wade Miley, with no apparent sign of the "dead arm" that caused his last start to be skipped. Pitching coach Charles Nady said, "He threw the ball well. It was coming out of his hand very good. Velocity was good and he was able to locate much better." He thew 26 pitches, and reports had Miley hitting 93 mph on the radar gun, a full 10 mph above what he was hitting before the layoff. It's expected he'll be up to 100 pitches by the end of spring, and in good position to start the third game of the season, against the Cardinals on April 3rd, as scheduled.

World Baseball Classic

The Dutch scored first in last night's semi-final, and held the powerful Dominican Republic off the board until the fifth inning, but couldn't quite pull off the big upset, and the DR prevailed 4-1, getting all of their runs in the fifth inning. They will face Puerto Rico again in the final tonight, with a first pitch a little after 5pm Arizona time. The Dominicans likely have to be considered favorites, having already beaten the Puerto Ricans twice already this tournament. The DR beat the PR 4-2 in first-round pool play, and then blanked them 2-0 on Saturday, in the final match of the second round.

Around baseball

• Ever wondered what's inside a baseball? Now you know...
• David Schoenfeld makes a case for the importance of statistics in baseball: "We all use them. All the time. They are a part of baseball, whether you're a mathematician or not."
• Reasons I'm glad not to live in San Francisco. $7 per hour parking.
• How does Bryce Harper break in a new glove? He gives it to his dad, who then... Well: "Harper stuffed three balls into the glove, tied it shut and dropped it in a bucket of water for a day. The former ironworker then pulled the glove out of the water and smashed it with a sledgehammer."