Good Q & A today from Dejan Kovacevic. Regarding Doumit -- I'm not sure that playing a guy every day is the only way to commit to him, but he's right, I think, that the Bucs have got themselves into a position (with so much starting pitching) where they need to be finding bats first and positions for them to play second. As much as I like Lawton and as much as I touted trying to win now, the fact is, the season has not gone as I hoped. As I suspected, the disastrous April looks to be too much for the team to overcome. I think they can play .500 ball or .525 ball the rest of the way, even if they are playing younger guys, but that won't be enough to crack .500 permanently until, maybe, the very end of the season. Doumit needs to start more often, even if that means Matt Lawton rests more than he'd like.
Regading the hot hand -- he's absolutely right that batter vs. specific pitcher splits mean little more than batter vs. yesterday's pitcher splits. I've written about this before. A batter v. pitcher split has to be quite dramatic to clearly lie outside the allowance for randomness. They may still have use as an impartial way of alloting playing time; the manager can say, I don't make the lineup, your past performance does. Used that way, they may serve another, different purpose, then, that might be a good tactic for a manager who is forced to platoon a bunch of guys. It's probably not working much better than drawing names from a hat or using a clubhouse Magic 8 ball: Should Ryan start today? Signs point to yes. But it's less obviously arbitrary and has the virtue of rewarding past performance.
Much is made of the "hot hand" being superstition. It may be with basketball shooting, but it's not with hitting. I don't what all factors go into this, but it's plenty clear to me that players who have been red hot the past few days or weeks are much more likely to rip your pitchers than players who are coming off an 0-for-11 streak with six strikeouts--regardless of their career numbers.
The Dock Ellis article of a few days ago also made me think the Bucs should start throwing the ball high, hard, and inside on some of these guys who been giving us the Jose Guillen treatment. It was long a part of the game for good reason.
Maybe that's why Mike Johnston was recalled ... to do some Bob Probert from the mound. (Back when he was writing his own Pirates blog, Mojo suggested that Johnston belonged on the fourth line.) Send him in there to buzz some towers.
Dave Williams and John Patterson in two minutes.
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