Storms pushed Tuesday night's game to Wednesday night, with an already scheduled day game on tap beforehand. Dustin Moseley will slide into the early start against Matt Garza. James Russell/Jeff Samardzija will be responsible for most of the night cap. Aaron Harang will take the mound for the Padres.
Harang is a San Diego native in his first season back home with the Friars. Well known to most Cub fans from his years with the Reds, Harang is no longer the front-line starter of five years ago. He's still 6'7" with a more over-the-top delivery than Moseley and Tim Stauffer, so he'll give hitters a different look relative to the first two games of the series.
Harang has that nasty slider that misses bats and picks-up ground balls, but his other offerings are underwhelming and yield a lot of fly balls. His four-seam fastball is his next best offering, perhaps close to the slider in terms of quality. Harang's sinker/curve/change are not as effective as Moseley's and Stauffer's, at least in recent years.
Harang is off to a good start in 2011. Three games, six innings and run each. Harang's walk and strikeout rates moved in the wrong direction in 2010, but his three starts in 2011 are inline with his career marks. That means two things; first, he's not pitching as well as it looks (batted balls will start to drop/clear fences outside of Petco) and second, absolutely nothing since it's just three games.
Harang had bad luck on balls in play in 2010, maybe, so his 5.32 ERA was probably not as red a flag as it appeared. Despite his W/L records in 2008 and 2009, Harang was an effective pitcher despite his hitter-friendly homer park. Now residing in Petco, Harang could easily rebound to pre-2010 levels. It would be much more unlikely that he'll come back to the 2006-2007 version.
Harang is essentially a two-pitch guy against righties. They happen to be his two best pitches, so that's not such an awful thing. Lefties get the full set of five pitches.
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