We’re back! What a relief. Get it? Relief. Like, relief pitching.

Gnopple, you’ve inspired me to pick up the good fight for middle-relief recognition again.  When Joey Devine went down with an injury in late May, a piece of me did die, but with his imminent return, I feel ready to blog again.  For now, I provide a link that I meant to post awhile back.  The Hardball Times conducted a study and produced an interesting piece on whether relief pitchers suffer from pitching on back-to-back days.  A snippet:

While this study appears to generally conform to common knowledge, it still is nice to look at. While pitchers appear to lose a little on their fastball, their sinkers appear to have more bite while their sliders remain relatively unchanged.