Right to Bear Armas In An Unarmed Division

What a rip-roaring game today. Had to leave early to switch jobs, so I missed 5/8 of the scoring, but I saw what I needed to see. Keep the recap simple, right? Straight into notes about the game.

• What a slap for Cota. The day after Paulino plays all 16 innings, they dump him onto the 15-day DL with a "shoulder injury" so they can call up Doumit to start intead of him. Just trade the guy already.
• That said, good job by Doumit. The only guy who ran on him, he nailed (the ump blew the call), plus a 2-4 day at the plate. I say we start him in right tomorrow to give Eldred a day off.
• Speaking of Eldred (yet another transition), he's been shaking his left hand after some of his swings the last few games. I'm beginning to wonder.
• Today's game, much like every other game we have (and will later) play against Houston, was yet another battle to lose first. We made Wandy Rodriguez look a lot better than he really is, and the Astros made Armas look better than he is, as well. Armas' line would've looked a lot more Tonyesque had Bayliss not come in and done an amazing job of getting through three outs in the sixth without allowing anyone to score. Kudos, Jonah.

Now on to the always fun parts....statistical oddities!

The Pirates are now, as of today's win, 10-10 and in second place. Don't be surprised if today's standings (as far as win percentages, games back, etc.) look a lot like the standings headed at least into the All-Star break, if not later. This division truly is pitiful. Consider the following....

• The Cardinal's best pitcher right now is Braden Looper, making his first appearance as a starting pitcher since 1997, and compiling a 3-1 record and a 1.91 ERA through five starts. What makes his statistics stick out even more is that St. Louis' second best pitcher is our old friend Kip Wells, who is currently 1-4 with a 4.70 ERA. The Cardinals' rotation outside of Looper has made 16 starts and has posted a 2-9 record and a 5.28 ERA. Their offense? Not horrible, but Chris Duncan is the only player with an OPS over .805.
• What about them Cubs? Their offense seems alright. Five everyday starters with a batting average of .294 or better, and it isn't empty average, because three of those five also have an OPS over .850. Yet they're 8-13 because that hitting has been splitsville. Ramirez, DeRosa and FLoyd haven't hit well at home, and Murton, Barrett, and Soriano haven't hit at all on the road. Their pitching on the other hand...hasn't been horrible, considering that their 2-3-4 starters have combined to post a 2.14 ERA thus far in 2007. However, that 2.14 ERA does not include one Carlos Zambrano, the supposed staff ace, who has allowed 21 runs on 30 hits while also allowing 19 walks and 7 home runs in only 27 1/3 innings. Surely, in this division, Chicago can reasonably contend with three good pitchers and their offense, but they'll still miss the playoffs and waste most of that $300 million if Zambrano doesn't get right.
• Surely the Pirates need to worry about the Reds! Their Rule 5 draft pick, Josh Hamilton, has posted a .298 average and a 1.134 OPS through 17 games while playing some very nice defense in CF, and their three elder statesmen - Jeff Conine, Scott Hatteberg, and Alex Gonzalez - were all signed for their defense, but are all also hitting .300 or better; all of this has Cincinnati's offense sputtering a bit but still putting up runs at almost four per game. Their worst starting pitcher has posted an ERA of 4.43 so far this season. Then why are the Reds 10-12? Two of their best hitters (Gonzalez and Conine) aren't producing at home, and their catching tandem, starting third baseman, and starting second baseman are hitting a combined .192. Thus, their starting rotation has posted 12 quality starts in 22 games, with another two very nearly quality starts, and they are only 5-2 in those games.
• Now that the series is over with Houston, we can take a closer look at them. Their problems are quite simple - they can't hit OR pitch. Their biggest power hitters are Ensberg, Berkman, and Carlos Lee. Those three have combined for a .247 average and a .755 OPS. It's great that Biggio and Loretta are hitting, but they rarely play on the same day, and the guys behind them aren't doing anything. The pitching has been strange so far - no one other than Woody Williams has really been bad so far, but no one other than Oswalt has been particularly good, either. The Jennings/Albers mishmash has four quality starts in four outings, and Rodriguez and Oswalt have six quality starts in nine outings. That seems a lot like Houston has turned into us - IF the offense can start hitting, and IF Albers and Rodriguez and Jennings can keep up their current pace when Jennings finally returns, they can turn around their season of four one-run and four two-run losses.
• That leaves the....mighty? Brewers as serious competition for the Pirates. Johnny Estrada (C) and Bill Hall (3B) are the only everyday starters with an OPS under .805. The rotation has had some off days, but has still posted an ERA of 4.10 through 21 games. They've also had the benefit of a 4-1 record against the Pirates and Astros (with another 7 games against them in the next two weeks). Too early to tell if the Brewers are really a contender or just the least bad team.

So let's recap...Cincinnati and Chicago can't hit consistently, Houston can't hit at all, and St. Louis' patchwork rotation may already be pulling apart at the seams. This definitely appears to be a year where the Pirates can at least put up a winning record in the division.

LaVern Will Turn Into Shirley

Speaking of that untrackable game against Braden Looper, I can't think of a situation recently where I have been more eagerly awaiting the drop of the other shoe. The Cardinals have only provided him with 11 runs of support in 19 innings (eight of which came in his start Sunday against Milwaukee), yet Looper is 2-1 with a 2.37 ERA through his first three starts. How do we know Looper will soon come crashing to Earth? Track record, of course. Looper has been in the majors full-time since 1999, and in pro ball since 1997. There is probably a very good reason why the Cardinals (the team that originally drafted him) moved him to the bullpen when they promoted him to AA 10 years ago, and an equally good reason why he was never moved back to the rotation.

As most baseball fanatics are aware, guys are typically moved to the bullpen because they don't have either the stamina or the variety in their pitching to fool the hitters more than once or twice per appearance. Looper is also 32 years old, so it is unlikely that the Cards moved him to the rotation because he suddenly learned a new pitch or increased the speed of his fastball.

Looper may be 2-1 with a 2.37 ERA, but there are signs. He has only struck out nine of the 75 batters he has faced, and three of those came against opposing pitchers. He also has walked six batters, and has only recorded 26 of his 57 outs (46.5%) by ground balls.

So Looper doesn't strike anyone out and isn't really utilizing his excellent defensive infield to help him out. This means that when batters see him a second time and have probably figured him out, those numbers are going to skyrocket unless his pitches get heavy real soon.

Don't worry, Bucco fans, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati and Houston's rotations, combined with Chicago and Houston's inability to hit consistently, mean that warmer weather should equal better hitting from LaRoche and Paulino, along with a requisite jump in the standings.

By Their Chinny Chin Chins...

The Pirates sneak another one past the baseball gods, overcoming a couple of unexpected errors from Adam LaRoche and Jose Bautista and getting Albert Pujols to foul out and preserve a 3-2 victory and the Buccos 5th win of the season. This puts the team ahead of last year, where they didn't get win #5 until game 16, and hopefully they won't match last year going forward, either, since last season the 5th win was followed by a 7 game losing streak where they were outscored 34-12.

All of this mediocrity and occasional winning is covering up a few disturbing trends, though, which I think need to be brought to light.

Am I talking about Adam LaRoche? No. It's difficult to be surprised at a hitter struggling in April when he has never hit over .200 in that month.

One potential concern is Jose Bautista. He started of a smoking 6 for 13 this season, and didn't strike out in his first 26 at-bats, but has now struck out 6 times in his last 17 at-bats. Hopefully it is a slump and not a continual issue.

Ronny Paulino? Not him either. Ronny doesn't have a history of poor starts to fall back on and explain away his .189 average, but last season Paulino only played in five games prior to April 25th, so I have a funny feeling the current weather is quite disagreeable for him.

There are hitters across the majors who are struggling with the cold weather. Of the NL's top 10 hitters by OPS last season, all of whom had an OPS over .910, only two of them (Miguel Cabrera and Matt Holliday) are posting an OPS over .870 so far. Granted, a lot of the "big boppers" are struggling a bit less than Bay and LaRoche, but that should even out during the course of the season.

The problem I am worried about is the Pirates wasting the starting pitching they are getting, mainly in the form of the same impatience they showed last season. Pirates starting pitching has gone 71 innings through 11 games an average of just under 6 2/3 innings per start, and have compiled an ERA of 3.80. Remove Zach Duke's bad start against San Francisco, and those numbers become 69 innings in 10 games (7 innings per start) and an ERA of 3.00. In spite of those numbers, which include 6 quality starts and a couple more that almost were, they have compiled a measly 3-4 record.

What does that have to do with the Pirates' impatience at the plate? Well, common sense dictates that the more a pitcher throws, the more tired he gets, and the more tired he gets, the more hittable he becomes. Therefore, even with the best of pitchers, the faster you can escalate a pitch count, the more likely you are to see hittable pitches.

Apparently the Pirates don't follow this philosophy, and the stats seem to indicate that Adam LaRoche needs to start sharing his ADD medication. The team is dead last in the NL with 25 BB in 11 games - just over two walks per game. The only other NL teams who have less than 35 (three per game) are St. Louis, Milwaukee, Chicago, and San Francisco. But the Brewers and Cubs are hitting (3rd and 4th in average, respectively) ans St. Louis is pitching (3rd best ERA in the NL), so those guys aren't struggling like the Pirates.

I looked into something that I thought might be a trend, and it seems as though I was right. The Pirates are getting the starting pitchers to work very early on in games, but seem to give up on the idea after that.

I must note that when I talk about these stats, I have to leave out the game where we were shut out by Braden Looper, because I couldn't find a pitch-by-pitch log.

The Pirates have seen upwards of four pitches per plate appearance in either the first or second inning of every game (1st inning of games 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, and 11; 2nd inning of games 2, 5, 6, and 9), to the tune of 4.47 pitches per plate appearance for 53 hitters in those innings. Over the remainder of the innings where Pirate hitters have faced the opposing starter, 217 hitters have seen a mere 3.52 pitches per plate appearance - a full pitch less!

Remove the four other really good innings the team had (five hitters seeing 23 pitches twice in the 4th and 6th against Randy Keisler; six hitters seeing 29 pitches in the 6th against Aaron Harang; five hitters seeing 24 pitches in the 9th against Russ Ortiz) and that average drops to an even lower 3.38 pitches per plate appearance.

So all that numbers show you a team that has one good inning early on where they work the count, then start hacking away. Seeing almost a pitch and a half less per plate appearance after you work the count early on defeats the purpose of doing so. Today was the perfect example. In jumping out to a 3-0 lead in the first inning, the Pirates sent eight hitters to the plate and made Anthony Reyes throw a total of 47 pitches (almost six P/PA), finishing the inning with three hits and two walks. During the remaining eight innings, the Bucs sent 28 batters up and saw only 98 pitches, and half of those batters saw three pitches or less, managing only five hits and one walk in those eight innings. This type of patience seems counter productive, but gets muddled when you compare it to something else...

The Pirates are hitting 16-44 (.364) when putting the 1st pitch in play, and only 60-282 (.213) otherwise.

So perhaps my diatribe about patience is ruined? Perhaps. Then again, it could be a combination of things. For instance, in today's game, the Pirates had two instances where the first hitter smacked a triple on the first pitch of the inning, then spent the rest of the inning stuck at third.

Only time will tell.

Well Whoopity-Doo

The Pittsburgh Pirates officially got their first win a week earlier than last season, though it wasn't necessarily due to anything fantastic they did on their own.

Good news: The team won 4-2 in extra innings after being down 2-1 and down to their final out; Jose Bautista, Jack Wilson, and Nate McClouth combined to go 5-10; Zach Duke wasn't fantastic (8H, no K's), but still held Houston to two runs and only made a few mistakes (Scott's HR and a couple hard 2B's) - if he improves from here, I'll take it; we apparently still own Lidge; and the bullpen was perfect.

Bad news: Castillo was all glove, no hit; LaRoche struck out four times in five at-bats; Paulino was also ofer in five at-bats; the Pirates showed a troublesome lack of patience - Jack Wilson got Oswalt to throw 12 pitches in his first at-bat of the game, and Duffy drew a walk in his first. Outside of that, Oswalt threw 80 pitches in 7 1/3 innings, and the Pirates drew exactly one other walk - off Lidge. Not so good.

In spite of that, the Pirates faced one of the five best pitchers in the National League and managed to pitch and defend well enough to hang around and expose Houston's bullpen for what it is. A win is a win, but this looks an awful lot like the good pitch, great defend, no hit teams of the recent past.

We'll see what happens the next couple days against less stellar pitching in Jason Jennings and Woody Williams.


Elsewhere around the league:

• Curt Schilling got outpitched by the newly-rich Gil Meche, Mark Grudzielanek rediscovered his bat (if only for one day) and the Royals beat the Red Sox, 7-1.
• Ben Sheets may or may not be back. Sheets pitched a complete game, gave up a home run to Jeff Kent to lead off the second inning, and allowed only one other hit all game in a 7-1 Milwaukee win. Then again, he of the 10.5 K/9 only struck out three yesterday.
• Adam Dunn hit two home runs in his first two at-bats of 2007, Aaron Harang was good, and Carlos Zambrano most definitely was not. Reds 5, Cubs 1.
• As bad as Zambrano and Schilling were, Jose Contreras was even worse, giving up eight runs in an inning-plus of work, and Cleveland rgave the scoreboard an early workout in a 12-5 win.
• Washington played so poorly against Florida that their star of the game was...Dimitri Young?

It was a day full of mediocre pitching. Carl Pavano, Brandon Webb and Johan Santana's teams got wins in spite of their mediocrity, as did C.C. Sabathia.

Should be a fun year.

NL Central

Cincinnati 1-0

Pittsburgh 1-0

Chicago 0-1

Houston 0-1

St. Louis 0-1

Even if it's only for a day....