Sunday, May 27, 2007

Comedy Central

The name seems appropriate. Why? Well let's look at what's been going on lately...


The Brewers still lead the division, but have now lost 11 of their last 15 games and are in danger of hanging another one in the L column against Jake Peavy today. Any reason? Well....

During this 15 game schneid, the Brewers have (obviously) made three full turns through the rotation. During that time, Ben Sheets is 2-1 with a 3.15 ERA, a 0.75 WHIP, and 20K's to 4 BB's in 20 innings. The rest of Milwaukee's rotation is 1-8 with a 7.17 ERA, a 1.68 WHIP, and only 35 strikeouts to go with 23 walks in 65 1/3 innings.

That looks like Brewer rotations past, no?


The Reds? Well...we're finding out that their bullpen is still not very good, their offense is still too all-or-nothing (HR's and K's)...and Arroyo is still a douche.

The Cubbies....Friday night said it all. After five innings, the usually reliable Ted Lilly had surrendered five runs, and the Cubs trailed 5-1 with nine outs left. They then came out a-balsting, scoring seven runs in the seventh to take an 8-5 lead.....only to wind up losing 9-8, because Bob Howry and Wil Ohman combined to face four batters and get none of them out.


The Astros...have lost nine of their last ten games and been outscored 68-19 (!!!) in the process, including 58-12 during their six game losing streak.

The Cardinals managed to not blow a seven run lead against the nationals, and havent really beaten anybody except us lately.

Sure looks like a wide open division to me, eh? Let's see if we can find a way to win another one today.

Monday, May 7, 2007

More *$@#$ Ponderings

Hard to fit it all in one post when you only have the computer one day a week.

Will Freddy Sanchez return to form last year? Probably not. Props to Rocco from the post-game show, but here's why...

~Since 1960, batting champions have had an average drop of 37 points in their batting average the year after they won the title. This would mean a .307 average for Freddy, which is still very decent and about what he seems on pace for anyways.

~BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) is a nice little indicator. This is a measure of the percentage of balls put in play that become hits for a batter. The league average is between .300 and .310 depending on who you ask, and you can see if a hitters average was way above it (unlucky) or way above it (lucky) to tell where their average might go in the future. In 2005, Sanchez's BABIP was .308, right about league average. In 2006, Freddy's BABIP was .370. It is accepted that winning a batting title involves some luck, but that is a LOT of luck. This year Freddy's BABIP is again a more normal .306. That doesn't mean that Freddy is on pace to match his current .258 average, that will continue to climb, but I don't think the preseason projections of .310 will be very far off.

~Paul Zeise, 99 times out of 100, is a douchebag who knows nothing about anything other than college football and basketball. However, he made a very interesting point Sunday night. He said that the Yankees have been derided a bit for using so many starting pitchers, shuttling players back and forth from AAA and AA - players who obviously weren't ready based on the results. However, no matter the results, it does mean one thing - the Yankees are doing everything they can think of to try to win. They are trying everyone out to see who can get them a win. The Pirates have no such interest, or they wouldn't be leaving two starters at AAA with ERA's under 2.00

~The local media is making a big poof about this "Pirates have only scored in four of their last 45 innings" or whatever stat like that they want to throw up. It looks all fancy, but there's more to it than that. The Pirates have three pitchers (Snell, Gorzo, and Duke) who, more often than not, are going to give you a quality start, which means you'll only need about four runs to win. It doesn't particularly matter whether that comes as one run in each of the four innings, or four runs in the ninth, or however. My point is, the offense only needs to get a little better, not a lot better.

~On the bright side, the teamis 11-4 when they get a quality start. That stat would be 15-0 for a good team, but at least they're wasting good startsless frequently than in the past.

Ponderings

Nothing like another horrible round of duscussion on the #1 Cochran Sports Showdown to get my blood boiling. The topic of "what's wrong with the Pirates" came up, and a number of reasons were chucked out by the talking heads there, including:

~LaRoche isn't hitting.
~Sanchez isn't hitting.
~Nobody besides Doumit is doing anything at the plate.
~No pitcher besides Snell or Gorzellany is pitching well.
~The bullpen is being exposed.

Let's take a look at all of these possibilities, shall we?

Sure, LaRoche is hitting an atrocious .167, with a .566 OPS, but there are signs of life. First of all, there's an interesting split to be had. Adam is hitting 5 for 11 (.456) in three games since sitting out, and 12 for 49 (.245) since the day he hit his third home run (the last game against the Dodgers). That isn't fantastic, but it's still an improved .636 OPS. Matter of fact, there have only been six games all year where he hasn't reached base. Not a huge stat, but worth noting. There are certain signs of life for Adam, and things are looking up.

Sanchez not hitting? Sure, his average is only .258, but don't throw in the towel just yet, people. He hit a 1 for 19 slump in the first five games of the last homestand, but he's hitting .311 with a .738 OPS otherwise and .367 with an .820 OPS in the last seven games. So give the man time. He won't be what he was last year, but he'll still be good (more on that later).

Nobody besides Doumit doing anything at the plate? It would sure seem that way considering Doumit is the only Pirate hitting above .288 right now (.456 avg and 1.302 OPS in nine starts). However, there are signs of life. I already pointed out LaRoche and Sanchez showing signs of life in the past week. Another example is Jose Bautista.
The morning of April 28th, Bautista was hitting .289 and had nine doubles in his first 80 at-bats. Very encouraging. He also was managing a meager .307 OBP, due in no small part to drawing ONE walk in his first 81 plate appearances. That has turned around - somewhat - recently. In the last nine games, Bautista is hitting .185, but has a .666 OPS in that stretch, due to six walks in his last 33 plate appearances. He is now on pace for 86 walks instead of eight. Now he just needs to get hits AND walks at the same time.
What about Paulino and his ghastly .217 average? Paulino started the season hitting .138 in the first seven games, and is hitting .254 since then. Still not great though, right? How about the last 10 games, where Ronny is hitting .271 with an .885 OPS. Five of his last six hits have been doubles or home runs. This is another very good sign.
Little bit worried about Duffy. He's 3 for 30 in his last seven starts, during which his average has dropped from .286 to 237 and his OPS has dropped from .749 to .652 - let's hope this is just a slump (one that broke with his home run Sunday?) and not a regression.

No pitcher besides Snell and Gorzellany...hmmm...

Snell - 6 starts, 5 quality starts
Gorzo - 6 starts, 5 quality starts, one just shy
Duke - 7 starts, 4 quality starts, one just shy

O.K., so that statement is only partly wrong. Duke seems to have righted the ship since his bad outings against the Giants and Brewers. Snell and Gorzellany are great. Maholm is....still figuring it out? His complete game, even if it was against Houston, shows that the ability is there. It's merely a matter of him doing it, inning after inning.

Armas is my bone to pick here. He has now made five starts. Even if I give in to the whole "the first two starts were so far apart" yadda yadda...that still leaves three starts made on regular rest. In those three starts, he made it past the fifth inning once, gave up less that three runs twice (one by the sheer grace of Jonah Bayliss saving his ass)...he has labored. Consider this - Armas has pitched part or all of 24 innings in his five starts, and has thrown 460 pitches. That's 19 pitches per inning. If that's the Armas we know and love (the one true quality start against Chicago is the only outing where he threw less than 19 pitches in more than one inning), that's 95 pitches in five innings.

So what, right, the next best option is Chacon. Wrong. Bryan Bullington and John Van Benschoten have made 12 starts between them (JVB made #6 tonight). The combined line for the two of them - 12 GS, 70 1/3 IP, 51H, 13R, 11ER, 2HR, 4HB, 29BB, 44K...1.41 ERA, 1.14 WHIP.

They aren't striking guys out particularly frequently (more Bullington, JVB has 25 K's in 32 2/3 innings), but their numbers are still drastically better than Armas, Maholm, or Chacon.

If San Francisco calls up their rookie to replace a struggling veteran because he was dominating AA , there is NO reason why one of them should get called up now to replace Armas, and the other should get his shot if Maholm doesn't fix his ship.

Forget the bullpen. They've had a few specific bad outings lately, but that happened last year too. This post is getting long anyways. On to other things...