Seven

Esmil Rogers pitched like his name was on the stadium last night. And the .500 mark is well within sight. What's the difference? Apparently, it's the sinker.

 "His sinker, I think, is the biggest difference," said J.P. Arencibia. "Earlier guys could jump on his fastball. Now he's sinking it so they really have to respect it. He can sink a right-hander in and then they have to respect and then he can put the 96-mile-an hour fastball down and away and he strikes them out."

Promising rookie third baseman for the Rockies Nolan Arenado, conjugates the verb "to sink" when describing Rogers' pitching.

''It moves a lot, it sinks a lot,'' Arenado said. ''I didn't know it sank like that but it has a lot of sink. He did a very good job today.'

And Rogers is feeling it. “I have unbelievable confidence right now,” he said. “I can throw any pitch in any count that I want.”

Pat Hentgen approached Rogers early before a game in New York and asked him "Have you ever thrown a sinker?" Jeff Blair spoke to Hentgen about this, and reported on Baseball Central about it:

Rogers said he had, and Pat said, “Well, if you've got a few minutes, why don't we go out in the bullpen, because I want to show you something.”

And essentially what he did, he showed him a sinker that Scott Erickson– who had a terrific sinker when he was pitching in the Majors, and was a former teammate of Hentgen's. He showed him a sinker grip that Erickson showed Hentgen– Hentgen couldn't throw it all that well, but it was a grip and– to make a long story short– the way that Pat explained it, when you release the ball, you get the same sensation you get when throwing your four-seamer, except it’s a two-seamer. That’s what he told me– it involves a knuckle or… anything… something like that. And essentially, Rogers threw it in the bullpen, it was great, and then, as Pat said, “The next thing is, you’re going to do it in a game.”

First game out, Arencibia calls for it, throws it– great– falls in love with it. Gets Evan Longoria, his next outing after that, to hit into a double play, and now it’s like… it’s his pitch.

Delicious. Anyone who admires the art of pitching has got to love this story. I could listen to pitchers talk about pitching for a long, long time.

The Josh Johnson game (or win six, if you prefer) was maybe the most exciting of the year, at least the most intense.

“I could feel it in that first inning,” he said. “I was just letting it go, and not trying to force my slider to move, just trusting it.”

"We're winning,” he added. “That’s the fun part and the key thing.”

''He had everything going on,'' Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said. ''Good, live fastball, ball had a lot of jump on it, and a good breaking ball.''

''Definitely the most comfortable I've been,'' said Johnson, who also missed 31 games with a sore right triceps. ''Just being able to get extension on all my pitches, not have to worry about the triceps or anything like that. It's definitely nice.''

''He's definitely got some of the best stuff in the game,'' Colorado's Michael Cuddyer said. ''He's big, tall, throws hard. When he's throwing strikes like that, he can be tough. His fastball was getting on guys.''

It's just pitching porn at this point.