Posts Tagged ‘pitching’
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Birthrights and Bullpens: A look at the Phillies’ PitchingJune 22nd, 2008
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Philadelphians are bred with certain inalienable rights. You can think of them as parting gifts for hosting that whole Constitutional Convention thing. We can despise tourists or any visitor for that matter, we reserve the right to know that the best cheese steak spots are never what you see featured in any Food Network, Travel Channel, sports broadcast, or other terribly cliché media story, we can add mystery syllables to words that don’t need them or pronounce vowels in their opposite form without skipping a beat, and perhaps most importantly, we reserve the eternal right to know exactly what the Phillies need to do, when, how, and why.
Since I am a native Philadelphia, it would be remiss of me if I ignored my birthrights and the lineage of all those fans that have come before me. We share a communal heartbreak, a brotherhood of failure that is concentrated in a century-old dilemma that this franchise has yet to solve. The Phils need arms, good arms, and while pitching is a commodity for any team, the Phillies could be poised to make a serious run with a couple adjustments and acquisitions.
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As Braves Struggle Mightily, Team Somehow Finds Ways to Stay in RaceJune 19th, 2008
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There are several undeniable reasons as to why the Braves haven’t played up to their potential this season and frankly, they’re lucky to find themselves only 6½ games behind the division leading Philadelphia Phillies. It could be worse. Way worse. Nonetheless, with about a month of baseball left to play before the all-star game, the Braves have reason to be optimistic, because they still have plenty of time to makeup ground in the National League East.
Everyone in Braves Nation knows that this team has been tormented by a ridiculous amount of injuries. The dour news that iconic pitcher John Smoltz would have to have season-ending shoulder surgery that could possibly bring a finish to his career left all of us shocked and his teammates wondering how they would manage to move on without their stoic and competitive leader. Tom Glavine pulled a flexor tendon in his pitching arm and is expected to miss a month. Mike Hampton is still Mike Hampton, happily taking $15 million of the Braves payroll and laughing all the way to the bank. He still suffers from a pectoral muscle strain that has kept him on the disabled list all year. Even rookie Jair Jurrjens couldn’t escape the bizarre injury bug, tweaking his ankle as he descended some stairs on the Braves recent trip to Wrigley Field in Chicago. Read more
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Indians remember how to hit, forget how to pitch.June 7th, 2008
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First the good: the Cleveland Indians just completed a 2-2 series split against the Texas Rangers and managed to score 39 runs over the four games. That gives the Indians 40 runs over the first five games of June, which is six games faster than it took them to reach 40 runs in both April and May. In other words, the Indians are starting to score some runs.
Of course, scoring runs against Texas is nothing new. For anybody. The Rangers have the highest ERA in the Majors (5.09), and at home, it’s even worse (5.15). In other words, starting to score runs against Texas is like slump-busting with a prostitute; it may be a start, and it may make you feel better, but it’s nothing to be proud of.
That said, coming into the series, Indians hitters had accumulated a total of 155 extra-base hits over their first 56 games. That’s 2.76 extra-base hits per game. That’s: Awful. Anemic. Atrocious. Augh. (For comparison, the Indians averaged 3.34 extra-base hits per game over the past two seasons, ranking 8th in the majors.) However, the Tribe pounded out 18 extra-base hits during the Texas series, 13 of which were doubles. That’s an average of .5 more doubles per game during the series than the Tribe averages extra-base hits thus far in 2008; in other words, it’s either an anomaly or a good sign of things to come.
And then there’s the pitching. In May, Indians pitchers had a combined ERA of 3.12. So far in June: 9.21. Now, this is obviously a small sample size so far, but the truth is, it’s more than that: the Indians have given up four or more runs in eight consecutive games. During that span, the team ERA is 7.37. (For comparison, the Indians started May by only allowing four or more runs just twice in the first 11 games.) In other words, the pitching is beginning to regress to the mean.
Losing Fausto Carmona didn’t help either. Paul Byrd in the rotation instead of Jake Westbrook is not a plus. Calling up Scott Elarton (5.40 ERA), Tom Mastny (21.00 ERA), and Rick Bauer (27.00 ERA) haven’t seemed to work much. But the real difference this year is Rafael Betancourt. In 2008, he has pitched 25 innings and given up 17 runs. He gave up 13 runs in all of 2007. I’ll talk more about Betancourt in another post, but combine his numbers with Borowski (9.00 ERA), and Indians bullpen is just plain bad.
There’s no doubt the Indians have the potential to get back to the playoffs. As bad as they’ve played, they still only trail the Chicago White Sox by 6.5 games in the AL Central. If the hitting can round [the proverbial third-base] corner and the pitching doesn’t continue their recent nose-dive, the Indians can still win this thing.
In other words, it’s not time to give up yet.
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43 1/3 and counting…May 15th, 2008
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43 1/3.
No, that’s not the number of times I banged my head against the wall after last night’s Cavs/Celtics game before I passed out (it was actually only 22 1/2); it’s the number of consecutive scoreless innings that Cleveland Indians starters have combined to pitch. Oh, and it’s still counting.
The Indians have thrown four shutouts in the last five games, and over the past six games, Tribe starters have an ERA of 0.19. That’s point-one-nine runs per nine innings. Who needs offense with pitching like that?
Well, I hate to say it, but the Indians do. In the last four games, the Tribe offense has averaged just 2.25 runs on 5 hits per game. It’s a miracle they went 3-1 over that span, but as good as the Tribe pitching has been, I wouldn’t expect many more wins with the offense hitting .162 and producing just over 2 runs per game.
Honestly, I don’t know what’s more ridiculous; the obscenely good pitching or the obscenely offensive offense. For a minute, the Indians offense looked like it was back on track, scoring 18 runs in the first two games of the Toronto series last friday. Then the next game was rained out, and all of the sudden, the bats are lost again.
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Return to NormalcyApril 24th, 2008
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About a week ago, I wrote an article on the Twins’ failings in the bullpen. But a lot changed in a week, and that angle had to be ditched– well, not completely. I’m still going to bring up what happened, but we now have light at the end of the tunnel.
Things were looking scary for the Twins when, in the span of one week, the Twins’ mighty setup men managed to blow three big divisional games. The culprits: Pat Neshek, Matt Guerrier and Jesse Crain.
Neshek began the mess by giving up a grand slam to Joe Crede in the opening game against the Chicago White Sox on April 7 to spoil a 4-3 lead in the seventh. The Twins went on to lose 7-4. Guerrier started the inning by loading up the bases for Neshek, so we can’t give Neshek all the blame, but he did give up the shot to bring them all in.
Then on the following Monday, Guerrier and Neshek managed to blow a five-run lead and eventually, the game, to the slumping Detroit Tigers 11-9.
Crain followed suit the very next night, spoiling a solid start by Scott Baker by giving up a rocketing two-run homer to Detroit’s Magglio Ordonez in the eighth inning to give the Tigers a 6-5 win and two-game series sweep.
The result of rough week for the setup corps was a combined nine runs given up and three losses in just 3 1/3 innings pitched, ballooning their combined ERA to 8.95 on the season to go along with their 0-3 record.