Mat Latos, SP

[Mainge]

He did throw his glove. Where do we draw the line between what's nice and not nice?

[HUGG]

What if he went home and took it out on his cat? how would that make you feel?

That's not even funny, asshole

[Benched]

Not much has been said on his cat's Twitter since April 4th.

https://twitter.com/catlatos

[Bobbob1313]

First, the good news: Marlins pitcher Mat Latos was certainly much more effective in his second start against the Braves Monday night. He actually got out of the first inning this time and lowered his ERA some 80 points in the process.
Unfortunately, it is clear there is still plenty of work to be done. He was tagged for two earned runs on five hits over four-plus innings, with a 2.00 WHIP and 10 flyball outs to only one groundball. There were some extenuating circumstances in this one, as Latos remained in the game following a 39-minute rain delay, and the delay seemed to affect his throwing:

Latos hit 94-plus mph with his fastball three times before the delay and eclipsed 93 mph 11 times on his first 57 pitches, but was unable hit 94 after returning from the delay -- he hit 93 just once on his final 23 pitches.
More worrisome, Latos' velocity fell off completely by the end of the start, as he didn't even hit 91 on any of his six pitches during his brief appearance in the fifth inning before being pulled following several hard-hit balls.
Latos' control also fell apart following the delay, as he ended up throwing just 11 of his final 23 pitches for strikes. You might be able to get away with diminished velocity if you can command your pitches, but that was an issue for Latos yet again in his second start, as he continues to leave pitches up in the top half of the strike zone.
Through two starts, Latos has left 27.6 percent of his pitches in the top two-thirds of the strike zone, compared to 22.1 percent a year ago. Eleven of the 22 balls in play against Latos have come in that part of the zone, while opposing batters are hitting .583 on those pitches.
Last season, opposing batters hit just .283 on balls in the upper two-thirds of the strike zone, but more importantly, just 31.4 percent of all balls in play on him came on those pitches.
The big issue so far seems to be that Latos just isn't fooling hitters into swinging at balls out of the zone. According to FanGraphs.com, opposing batters have swung at just 12.1 percent of the pitches Latos has thrown outside of the strike zone through two starts. He has been between 31 percent and 34.2 percent in every previous season, and often lived below strike zone, inducing wild chases on pitches hitters could do nothing with.
For a pitcher who may not have the same swing-and-miss stuff he once did, Latos is going to need to figure out a way to get batters to chase the junk outside of the zone.
One thing to keep in mind is that any trends Latos has shown so far may also be the result of the Braves hitters' own skill sets. To this point in the season, the Braves are one of the most strikeout-averse teams in the game, ranking just 26th in strikeout percentage. This team doesn't have much punch altogether, so if it's going to survive as a unit, it will have to do so on the strength of its collective discipline.
The bad news for Latos is, so far that hasn't been true. Even considering that two of their seven games have come against Latos, the Braves have been more than willing to swing away at pitches outside of the strike zone, doing so on 31.9 percent of those pitches, the 11th-highest mark in baseball.
It's possible the Braves are just an especially bad matchup for Latos, and we'll see him improve as the season goes on. It is also possible he just had two shaky starts, one of which forced him to throw on a soggy mound and featured two different rain delays, and it happened to coincide with the start of the season
However, after last week's disaster, we wanted to see more from Latos in his second time out to put those concerns to bed. He didn't do that, which means skepticism about what kind of pitcher he could be remains. If you weren't buying Latos as a bounceback candidate coming into the season, nothing we have seen so far should convince you to change your mind.

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/fantasy...-for-mat-latos

[HUGG]

that's just some dick fantasy writer's take though

[Nick]

The kind of asshole that bolds his last name.

[emkayseven]

the kind that doesn't even put a period at the end of the 4th to last paragraph

[MiamiHomer]

[tweet]593582373238890496[/tweet]

[thatnewguy]

Latos gets shelled every game. I can't remember the last pitcher I saw that got so many loud outs. That's not good and he doesn't look good.

[Namaste]

Yeah, I've seen enough to say that my very official eye test tells me he is nothing more than a solid #4.


Solid #4.

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Our playoff rotation:

Fernandez
Alvarez
Cosart
Latos

Koehler
Haren

Ramos
Dunn

Shrek

[HUGG]

he's gonna Javier Vasquez the shit out of the 2nd half of this season

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBwAxmrE194

[thatnewguy]

Believe me, I'd be more than happy if he does.

[xeysz]

Mat Latos Throws a Pitch That Nobody Else Has Thrown

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Just another thing you'd expect normal tv analysts to talk about, but not ours