Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Three Notes on Pitching

Haven't had much baseball commentary in quite some time so here's a little something: the Last 10 Starts Gamelog of Houston Astros pitcher Wandy Rodriguez.

After making serious strides last year toward becoming a high level major league pitcher, this year Rodriguez has catapulted into the stratosphere as one of the best pitchers in all of baseball. With a 2.82 ERA, Wandy currently ranks seventh in the national league; but, amazingly, that 2.82 would be a second-best 2.33 were it not for one terrible game two weeks ago where he gave up ten runs in four innings of work. Of course, "That's what they play the games for", yes, but as you see in the gamelog below, this bad outing is even more of an outlier, as Rodriguez astonishingly gave up only one or zero runs in all other nine starts during the block.

Who knows if he'll be able to keep up this pace, but given that Wandy is also ninth in the NL in strikeouts, I'm calling that we'll be seeing more and more of him on atop the leaderboards in years to come.

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Speaking of leaderboards though, this season has been nothing if not a banner year renaissance for the art of pitching (and, ahem, not hitting). You want fast proof? This year there are fourteen pitchers in the majors sporting ERAs under 3.00. Last year? Eight. And 2007? One (Jake Peavy, please stand up). Sure, ERA doesn't tell the whole story, but there's a huge difference between fourteen and one, and there are many other supplementary stats to fill in this story if you're interested.

Amidst all this great pitching though is the less-discussed story that four of the five best pitchers in the majors are currently throwing for either St. Louis or San Francisco (and the fifth I already covered earlier).

As you can see, all four men from STL and SFO are currently cleaning up, with Wainwright in particular coming on strongly now as the season winds down. I very much hope that the Braves somehow manage to inch in as the wild card this year, but it would be a great next possibility if somehow STL and SFO wind up facing each other (with John Smoltz and Randy Johnson to face off in a battle of Used-To-Be-Greats in Game 3 or 4).

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And finally, one man who sadly you don't see appearing above is my bro Danny Haren, who came out of the gates banging in 2009, but once again has fallen back to earth after the All-Star break. I wish it weren't true, because I truly love this guy, but I called this shit back on May 3.

As you see in the charts above, Haren has for the fourth straight season pitched spectacularly in the first half, and then slightly worse than league average in the second. Anything can happen in one season, or even two, but four straight years of a repeated outcome means that SOMETHING is going on. No idea what exactly, or whether or not it can be fixed or even adjusted, but I hope for Danny's sake that someone figures it out for him.

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It's taken five months, but I'm happy to say i'm finally "Yay, baseball!!" Here's looking forward to an exciting conclusion of the season from here on out.

cheers,

Jeffrey

Labels: baseball, case studies, statistics

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 8/26/2009 01:13:00 AM 0 comments

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