In case you haven't heard, Quad Cities has a beautiful setting for a ballpark, located literally next to the Mississippi. The Centennial Bridge seems to jut from the 1B side of the park over the river to Illinois. Periodically lefties plunk one in the drink, making the park something of an A-ball answer to PNC or whatever they call PacBell these days. I really wanted to make a trip to QC this year, and with it being August, I was running out of time. The Cardinals gave me a kick in the pants by sending Mark Mulder on a rehab assignment there, so I made the five-hour drive to log what I saw.

The executive summary is that Mulder looked like Swamp Gas. He was throwing fastballs almost exclusively, and when he did throw his curve, it usually ended in the dirt. A smart, reasonably talented hitter like John Mayberry, Jr., could exploit that. On the other hand, Mulder kept everything down, and that may have expanded the bottom of the strike zone a bit. I logged all 57 pitches using the scoreboard radar gun. There's the standard caveat for scoreboard radar guns, although in this case the hometown folks think theirs is a couple of miles per hour slow. That fits with what Baseball America has said about the opposing starter Omar Poveda, who was throwing a couple of mph faster than Mulder, and it fits with what I've read on Chris Perez, who was timed at 92-93 (and he did look faster than that). I'm comfortable saying Mulder was living around 87-88. With all the qualifiers you can think of, based on what I saw, I'd expect Mulder will be a shade ahead of Jeff Suppan, and well ahead of Weaver and Marquis. Keep in mind I'm convinced Suppan is the realization of the Platonic abstract of mediocre (as in average) pitching.

OK, here's my notation:

C = Called Strike
S = Swinging Strike
B = Ball
F = Final
HH = Hit Hard
HE = Hit Easy

1. 84 B, 87 C, 86 S, 83 S (K)
2. 89 F, 88 B, 88 F, 86 B, 83 B, 88 B (BB)
3. 88 HE (543 GIDP)

4. 84 B, 83 B, 84 HH (Mayberry double to RCF)
5. 86 B, 83 C, 79 S, 68 B, 87 B, 84 B (BB)
6. 87 F, 78 B, 83 B, 86 HE (5U tag, then throwing error to first)
7. 86 B, 87 C, 86 HE (3U, run scored)
8. 86 B, 87 F, 85 B, 87 HE (3U)

9. 87 C, 82 HE (7)
10. 84 B, 84 B, 83 HH (7)
11. 86 C, 86 F, 67 B, 69 B (ugh), 84 F, 82 HE (63)

12. 86 B (where was that, Blue?), 80 F, 76 B, 83 S, 77 HE (Foul 3)
13. 81 C, 76 HH (D8, 400 ft flyout)
14. 86 C, 81 HE (Foul 7)

15. 84 HH (8)
16. 84 C, 82 F, 81 HE (43)
17. 84 HH (HR, ~400 ft bomb to left)
18. 86 HE (43)

You'll notice they were hacking away in the 5th. The "ugh" was prompted by a weird looking delivery on that particular pitch. Otherwise Mulder's much-discussed mechanics looked OK to me. Of course I'm an amateur, and I may have been distracted by that lovely blue belt (picture from the Swing's site). Incidentally Mulder wore his pants long; what a weird symbol of status.

Bryan Anderson caught Mulder. He's a decent prospect thanks to his bat, and while his glove has had iffy reviews (~13 passed balls, last time I checked), he had a solid game today. Back when Ankiel was having his problems, the Cardinals sent him wherever Yadier Molina was catching. At the time the point was to help Ankiel, but in retrospect it probably helped Molina just as much. At the very least Anderson clearly was enjoying this opportunity to work with a big-time pitcher in a real game.