There are 93 days until Opening Day!

We're kicking off the new year with a count down to Opening Day. I'm going to have a new article up for you everyday from now until MLB's Opening Day--April 4. That's 93 days from now. I was trying to think of a theme and I decided to just randomly pick a stat, event, or maybe even jersey number represented by the number of days left until opening day. Today we're 93 days away and I decided to look at the game in which the 2015 Brewers scored their 93rd run of the season.

The game in question was on May 6 against the Dodgers. I went back through the editorial to find the recap of this particular game. It sounds like it was a fun one. The Brewers sent Wily Peralta to the mound to face off against the Dodgers' Joe Wieland. For as good as they are, the Dodgers always seem to have to cobble together the back-end of their rotation.

Joe Wieland was definitely not who they wanted out on the mound. He started two games at the major league level in 2015 and this one was by far the worst. He only went 4.2 innings and allowed 6 runs. Four of those runs came in on a pair of two-run home runs. The first was by Scooter Gennett who brought in Carlos Gomez after a first inning lead off single.

The next home run came two batters later. Ryan Braun drew a walk after Gennett's homer. Then Adam Lind hit one of his own. As he crossed the plate, he scored the Brewers 93rd run of the season.

They wouldn't stop there though. Jean Segura wound up on second base for Martin Maldonado who drove him in with a line drive. All told, the Brewers scored 5 runs in that first inning which was a feat not accomplished against the Dodgers at that point in the season. The Brewers would go on to win the game 6-3.

Wily Peralta was pretty solid that day too. He did allow 3 runs, including 2 home runs. But he went 8 innings deep and only allowed 7 hits in total. He didn't walk a batter but struck out 6. That's what Peralta is capable of when he's on his game.

In the recap I noted his velocity looked like peak Peralta.

One thing I noticed that I'll have to check out tomorrow was his velocity. So far this season FanGraphs has his average fastball velocity down around 93.8 mph but that's skewed a bit by one outing where his fastball averaged 91.9. Without that his average velocity is closer to 94.2. Tonight though he was sitting 95-96 and hit 97 more than once. That's what his peak velocity looks like.

It was, in fact, the game where he had his highest average fastball velocity--94.9 mph--of the year. On the entire season PITCHf/x had Peralta with an average fastball velocity of 94.1. That is the lowest on record. But it looks with-in a normal range for him. In 2012--small sample size alert, he only pitched 29 innings at the major league level--he was averaging 95.4. The following season he sat around 94.6. Then in 2014 he jumped back up to 95.6.

I would point out that Peralta had struggled with some injuries this last year. He missed a lot of time with an oblique strain. I don't know how much that might have affected him. Even still, his average velocity of 94.1 mph is pretty decent.

I'm hopeful we'll see a bounce back season from Wily Peralta in 2016. I'll be interested to see how his velocity holds up this year. And we only have a short 93 days to wait to find out!