“I thought maybe he was rushing himself today,” said Dodger manager Joe Torre of the underwhelming 9th inning turned in by P George Sherrill in a 9-3 drubbing of Pittsburgh. If indeed, the Los Angeles reliever seemed unsettled, perhaps it had something to do with a written warning he’d received earlier from baseball’s discipline maven Bob Watson. From MLB.com’s Evan Drelich (link swiped from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)
Sherrill taped the letter, which was sent to him at Dodger Stadium when the Dodgers were on the road in Cincinnati, to his locker.
“With more strikes called, the game is faster,” read Sherrill’s hand-written note on the typed letter.
The letter, a warning that came without a fine, cited Sherrill for taking 45 seconds too long to throw his eight warm-up pitches.
“First time I got something like that,” Sherrill said. “It’s my seventh year in the big leagues, and I’ve never gotten one before. The thing is, you sit there and watch a game, and guys are throwing strikes on top of strikes, and [the umpires] are not calling them. That’s why games are taking so long, not because a guy has a little extra time to warm up.“