THIS JUST IN: Kip Wells is frustrating

Spin:

I'm just trying to get him to understand we want the hitter to make contact. The biggest thing with Kip is he tries to make too fine a pitch early in the count, then gets behind. If he gets ahead, his strike zone will expand. And, when that happens, he gets lots of soft grounders, soft fly balls.

Maybe the problem is that 95% of Pirates fans had diagnosed Kip with this problem sometime last year while it took Spin Williams until now while Kip kept floundering and getting progressively worse. The golden standard of what Kip Wells is capable of is his 3 hit 12 strikeout performance against Philly earlier this year, the problem is that for whatever reason he thinks he needs to strike out 12 guys every time he takes the mound. Maybe it's because he's afraid of what the bullpen will do with a tenuous lead, maybe it's because he's afraid of what Ty Wigginton will do at third base or what Craig Wilson will do in right field. Whatever the reason, there's something seriously wrong with Kip Wells right now.

After his 2003 season most of us were fairly sure that Kip was going to win 17 games in a year before he lost 17. In fact, if it wasn't for the bullpen pitching like they had a personal vendetta against Kip he would've won 17 or more in that year. He opened up 2004 with a dominating performance against the Phillies on opening day, leading us to a 2-1 win. By the end of the year his strikeout/walk ratio had dropped from almost 2-1 to 1.75-1. This year it's 1.38-1. It's a slippery slope, but it's a problem that's been obvious since last year. What I don't understand is why it took until we realized he was having a worse year than Jeff D'Amico did a couple years ago before we addressed it. One of the reasons I was so happy to see Lloyd gone is because I assumed it would mean Spin would be gone as well, for situations exactly like this one. I want to believe the 2003 Kip Wells can come back, but part of me says it might already be took late.