Ho hum. Looks like the middle of the lineup is coming back down to earth. Either that or the Cubs buried Kryptonite rods on the right side of the batter's box.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
light rain at the Belmont
Or so says weather.com. I don't have the TV on so I don't know what we can see there.
Am I reading this right - is Smarty Jones now at 1 to 9? Bet 9 win 10? You're insane to take those odds. Even at 2-5 it's not a smart wager.
My hunch is that Smarty Jones is not going to win. Purge appears to have fallen out of favor, prob. because of the rain and the sand and the long run. I'm going to back off the wager I proposed early in the week. All the total domination talk scares me and I can't believe Smarty Jones has a better than 50-50 chance of winning against eight other very good horses. Even the Devil Rays beat the Yankees sometimes.
Here are my wagers then: Eddington and Rock Hard Ten in a $2 exacta box ($4). $2 on Tap Dancer, Royal Assault, and Master David to win. That's ten bucks hedged against the possibility Smarty Jones can't do it.
I'll root for Smarty Jones, of course. It would be great to see him do it.
Friday, June 04, 2004
NL Central roundup
Brad Wilkerson showed some power tonight and les Expos stopped the Reds in Cincinnati. Dunn hit his fifteenth homer. The top of the lineup did nothing and the Reds continued their throw-strikes pitching philosophy, only walking two in the whole game.
The Cards just beat down Houston. The Cardinals are the best team in the league right now. (Always say that after your team gets swept.) Biggio had a nice game but Bagwell brought only a single and Berkman's lights were out. Matt Morris was not so good but Wade Miller was worse. They have to be concerned about him getting hit like this game after game after game. That win puts St. Louis one game back of Cincinnati.
The Brewers are out on the West Coast with a slim lead after four. It's Victor Santos against the Tank. Tankersley is an interesting story. When he came up with the Pads the first time - was it last year? - he couldn't pitch out of a jam and a number of veteran hitters called out the minor-league system for padding the stats of the minor-league pitchers. The Padres had some kind of rule where a pitcher came out of the game as soon as he gave up so many runs. They didn't want anyone getting shelled. This kept the truly disastrous outings off their resume and made everyone, including Tankersley, look like a minor-league stud to guys who look at stats and feel qualified to proclaim bold things about a player based on the stats alone. I'm not saying it's a bad way to bring up a pitcher. It might be a good way. It had to be tough for Tank, however, to know that his teammates thought the front office had trumped up his resume.
You know what happened with the Cubs and the Pirates. The Cubs are one game over .500, and the Pirates are six and a half games out of first place.
I like the Benson vs. Zambrano matchup tomorrow. One of these days the Pirates are going to do more than rattle Zambrano's cage. Of all the Cubs pitchers, Zambrano is the guy I'd most like to see the Bucs score and score and score against.
and another thing
Al at and another thing! was at the game. He reports some comical observations. I just read that blog for the first time & I like it.
Joe Borowski
We took a vote, he's our favorite Cub.
...the Cubs bring in a lefty to face Mackowiak, Mac pinch-hits with Chris Stynes, and Stynes delivers the goods. Wow.
Cubs 11-5 over Pirates today
Huh. That's an over/under of 111 wins in a hypothetical season of Mark Prior vs. Josh Fogg. Since the Cubs bullpen has been so crappy against the Bucs, I think it's a good deal for Pirates fans. A $5 bet would return $16.
There is this the-sun-will-never-rise-again thing with the Pirates. Get swept in a four-game series and it's hard to believe they're going to win again sometime soon.
Wilson not walking
Jack Wilson has hit .308 the last 21 days, but his OBP for that stretch is only .316. One walk in 78 at-bats. A .316 OBP is not good enough for the top of the order. I don't care what the batting average is.
Earlier other writers jumped on Wilson for having few walks while he was hitting .360 and higher. I said wait until his OBP falls below .340. The hope is that walks will replace hits when a batter goes through a stretch where he doesn't see many pitches he can hit hard. Wilson's batting average is falling and his walk total is falling with it.
Slow down, Jack, be patient. A .308 BA is pretty empty if it only amounts to a .316 OBP. In our wildest fantasy, Wilson manages a .340 OBP on the season. We'll take a .340 BA with no walks over a .300 BA with some walks or a .280 BA with many walks, but .300 with no walks maintain that modest goal of .340 OBP. There's little chance Wilson will ever be a high-walks guy since he lacks the power to draw the IBB numbers of guys like Pujols, Rolen, and Brian Giles.
For the record, Jack's hitting .343 with a .357 OBP on the season. On the whole, he's wildly exceeding expectations on the season. There's no great cause for alarm. He's cooling off and in a little slump, that's all. Let's not start calling him Marlon Byrd. His defense remains spectacular. He's a big asset for the club.
the Promised Land of .500 baseball
We can start calling Mac "Moses" if we reverse this losing trend soon. Fun work from Smizik. Like Mac, I think the starters can only get better. They've been that bad.
Suitable for framing
LaRussa and McClendon went at it last night and both got ejected. Story here. More here. LaRussa would like to intimidate the young Pirates pitchers by hollering about "retaliation" and spouting conspiracy bullshit everytime a young guy loses one up and in.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Bautista to Tampa Bay
One of the rule V milk carton boys and a 20th-round draft pick in 2000, Jose Bautista was claimed off waivers by Tampa Bay. He'd been with Baltimore. Had he cleared waivers, the Pirates could have bought him back.
Mac saying all the right things
It warms my heart. Steve Novotney has a good line of talk from the manager in that article.
McClendon acknowledged that his starters have disappointed him this year as much as the relievers did last season. "I think that's a fair assessment," he said. "But this is why I'm encouraged about where we are - we're two games under .500 and our starting pitching has been terrible, for the most part.John Perrotto also remarked that the starting rotation, which we all thought might be the strength of this club, has been its weakest part. I was thinking the same thing last night. Mac's right, though, it's too early to give up on anyone, and it's pretty remarkable how bad the starters have been and how close to .500 the team has remained."If you would have told me when we left spring training that we would be 23-25 and our starting pitchers would be where they are right now, I'd have hugged you because I think they are going to get better.
Hopefully the rotation will get it going before the offense hits one of those mass slumps like the Astros suffered at the end of May.
Gay pride at PNC
Check out the photo.
Or does that have something to do with the Lord promising not to punish the team with another Derek Bell?
We report, you decide.
More on the draft
Ed Eagle has this on the Bucs and this weekend's draft. Since the Bucs lost Maholm for a half-year or more to one of those freak injuries that happens every so often, I'd look to take another left-handed pitcher myself. I can see good reasons to take the local catcher too. Who knows. Good luck in the draft, Pirates people.
Simon buys 28 pairs of shoes
From the same Trib notebook:
First baseman Randall Simon hosted two teams, the Monarchs and Crawfords, from Pittsburgh's RBI youth league program. He bought Adidas spikes (the same brand he wears) for 28 players. He also purchased tickets to last night's game for the teams and signed autographs for the players.Simon is the slowest man in pro baseball. Do they really want his shoes?
Just kidding. It was a classy thing to do.
Boehringer hid injury
From the Trib notebook:
"He did not let on about the injury," McClendon said. "This is probably something that had been coming on. But I don't need heroes. I need healthy pitchers."Sensible comment from Mac.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Wells pitches per PA
Looking here, we find Wells at the top of the NL in pitches per PA. I'm looking Wednesday night too, so if you read this on Thursday and click on that link, the numbers might be updated a bit.
Right now Wells is listed as throwing 4.0 pitches per plate appearance. His company is not necessarily bad - Jason Schmidt throws 4.1 and Randy Johnson 3.9. The thing is, they are more effective than Kip; they get more outs per plate appearance. Schmidt averages 15.7 pitches per inning and Johnson 15.1 pitches per inning. Wells averages 18.1 pitches per inning. That's close to tops in the NL for starters. Only Montreal's Claudio Vargas throws more pitches per inning.
What does this mean? Give Wells 120 pitches and he won't get through the seventh if he has his usual 2004 stuff.
He can be better than that. In 2002 he averaged 15.5 pitches per inning and in 2003 he averaged 16.2 pitches per inning. He's never thrown more than 3200 pitches in a year.
At 18 per inning, 3200 pitches will get him only 177 2/3 innings. An "ace" will give you 200, 220. In 2003, only sixteen pitchers threw more than 3200 pitches and only Al Leiter averaged more than 16.8 pitches per inning. Leiter had a good year, winning fifteen. That's amazing considering he only made 30 starts. Typically starters can expect to win about 1/3 of their starts provided they play on a .500 team. Leiter won half his starts by holding batters to .260 / .351 / .396. No doubt some luck is involved. He gave up 15 home runs in 180 innings. Overall he was good enough for #2 pitcher on a 66-95 team. This year, Wells has been holding them to (not including tonight's start) .261 / .347 / .412. He's on course for about 20 home runs in 180 innings. He's not going to hit the 200 inning mark unless he brings down the number of pitches he throws per inning.
Reader Dan said all this much more concisely - he's been too cute around the corners this season. The solution is easy. He needs to, in the words of Craig Wilson, throw strikes.
Still no word on the trouble with his hand. Let's hope he's not seriously injured. Since pitchers tend to get hurt by throwing when they are fatigued, Wells will remain an injury candidate, even if he's A-OK for his next start, because he's laboring too hard to get to the seventh inning. It's not fair but the Bucs count on Wells more than anyone to go out there and give the bullpen a rest.
Wells lifted
Something's wrong with his hand and he's pulled from the 3-3 game tonight. He did throw 107 pitches. I know that would make my hand feel funny.
The Belmont
Let's talk horse racing for one minute.
Hard to believe a horse on the outside might be a 2-5 favorite at the Belmont. Tell me that doesn't make a difference. At the Derby he stalked from 13 and he did the same at Arkansas. The huge runaway victories came from prime post positions.
Smarty Jones has an impressive recent record (pdf), to say the least: he has won his last eight races. Them speed ratings are pretty good too. Pretty impressive stuff.
I'd consider Purge, Eddington, and Rock Hard Ten, in that order, after Smarty Jones. No sense betting on a 2-5 favorite, but there's no doubt he's one hell of a horse on one hell of a run. Lay my money on a trifecta box with Smarty Jones and whichever two of Purge, Eddington, and Rock Hard Ten have the longest odds. It would take a miracle for one of those other horses to factor against this competition.
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