Padilla Flashes Raw Stuff of Ace

In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.

The St. Louis Cardinals may have beaten themselves in getting swept by the Dodgers, but Game 3 left us with a classic question. Was Vicente Padilla's strong pitching performance all him or the opposing lineup's doing? On this particular night, there was probably little the Cardinals could have done to stop him.

Padilla brought the raw stuff of an ace to the hill, touching 97 mph and sitting around 93-96 most of the night. Most importantly he was able to locate his fastball inside to righties with some running action.

If you need further confirmation of the theory that attacking the zone with the fastball is the right way to go, consider these numbers. Padilla threw 97 pitches on Saturday. Seventy-seven of them were fastballs. When you are a pitcher that can reach the mid-90s with movement on your fastball, the way to go is attacking the zone, and sprinkling in the fastball where necessary.

With the Dodgers able to bring a pitcher throwing as well as Padilla is to Game 3 of the NLCS, it is difficult to imagine their opponent being able to match them. If he can continue to reach 96-97 mph and locate his curveball and cutter, there are few pitchers that can match his raw stuff to the mound, and an aggressive pitcher with that kind of pure stuff is going to be very dangerous.

Spotlight Moment

Given the ease with which Padilla rolled through the Cardinals' lineup, there may not have been one key moment that defined his outing. However, the way he went at Albert Pujols pretty much set the tone his entire outing. More often than not, Pujols thrives on pitchers' fear of throwing the ball on the inside part of the plate. In the case of Padilla, this was not the case. The Dodger right-hander did not hesitate to pound his fastball on the inner half. In fact, beyond the ball out over the plate that Pujols singled on in the first inning, he saw close to nothing but fastballs in on the hands with the occasional breaking ball mixed in down and away.

Vicente Padilla, in many ways proved a very simple point against Pujols on Saturday. First, pounding the fastball inside if you have the power fastball to do it, is still a sound strategy against any slugger, even the best in the game. And second, there is no magic formula for getting Albert Pujols out. If you can pitch to a hitter of his caliber without fear on the inside part of the plate you open up a lot of options on the other side with your secondary pitches.

Quick Hits

• It was abundantly clear to start Saturday night's game that the Cardinals intended to continue to pound Manny Ramirez with the fastball. On paper that sounds all well and good.

But Manny is still a very dangerous hitter, one that cannot be attacked with reckless abandon. Ramirez delivered three solid hits in Game 3, but if you look back at all three pitches, it came down mostly to poor execution, first from Joel Pineiro then from John Smoltz. Three fastballs that were intended for the outside corner missed by more than half the length of the plate, and at any stage in his career, these are pitches that Ramirez is just not going to miss.

He may not be the same player right now, but he is still a very intelligent hitter. He understands that teams are looking to pound the outside part of the plate, and he will wait patiently and hunt for a mistake. It just so happens he was given three very hittable mistakes Saturday night. Whether this strong performance turns Manny around remains to be seen, but it should at least be noted that it was not the St. Louis approach against him that failed -- it was the inability to carry out that strategy. If he proves he can drive the pitchers' pitches on the outside corner, then we know that the Manny of old has returned.

• What John Smoltz decides to do with his career this offseason remains to be seen, but if his final outing was the one on Saturday night, he at least went out showing flashes of his former self. While there is still some work to be done in his reinvention, he may have given us a glimpse of some of the adjustments he could continue to build on if he does decide to pitch next season. Age and struggles aside, Smoltz still has above-average stuff in his 92-94 mph fastball and plus diving slider. While he can't dominate with the fastball anymore, Smoltz showed the slider command to be able to pitch backwards and make a lot of good hitters look bad on the breaking ball. The lack of pinpoint command of the fastball still came back to bite him, but let's not be so quick to get Smoltz out of the fastball. He still has two quality pitches that some pitchers in their prime can only dream of.

Frankie Piliere spent the last three seasons working as a scout, most recently in the professional scouting department for the Texas Rangers in 2009. He now serves as the National Baseball Analyst here at FanHouse.