Sun ,I wish. we are unseasonably cold and windy. We can not get to 6o degrees and it feels worse.I bet Granderson says the wind caused him to miss that fly ball in the 9th.
Pitch count from his last few games:
130
128
127
128
104
112
126
125
Not sure why they think this is a good idea. He has 232 innings already, and if they go into the post-season and actually win a series, his 2010 season could be riddled with arm issues.
He is 25.Besides you have to accept the idea that 100 is a magic number for every pitcher.I am unconvinced. Porcello was allowed to go past the 5th one game. He is 20. His arm could probably handle it better than a 30 or 35 year old. Verlander is a hard thrower though. He hits 100 in the 8th inning too.
Guys go overboard with Sabermetric concepts. Success for a team is determined by one stat only…wins. A high team batting average or a lot of homeruns mean nothing. They are tools to obtain victories. If a guy won 20 games a year for year after year but gave up a lot of runs and hits, I would take him in a minute. When McClain went 31 and 6 , he was 25 games over by himself. What better stat could you have?
Guys downgrade batting average. Cabrera is batting 330. That gives him a bottom of 330 OBP. It does not take too many walks and getting hit to get a very good OBP. But the bulk is his batting average. It matters.
Yeah, it could turn out that Verlander is one of those guys who can deal with high pitch counts without it fucking up his arm, but that does seem a little worrying.
He has 10 games this year in which he’s gone 120 pitches or more, including 5 in the last month. Over the past 3 years of his career, he has a total of 6 games (2 per year) of 120 pitches or more. He’s a full 30 innings over his previous high.
It might be that none of this matters, that Verlander is just one of those guys who can keep pitching and pitching without a problem. I hope so, for his sake and Detroit’s.
So they don’t mean nothing, after all. They are things that help a team get victories, so they must mean something, right?
Thing is, if a guy won 20 games a year, for year after year, it would probably be because he was pitching awesome. And you would be able to see that he was pitching awesome by his other stats, the ones that actually tell you how well he was pitching, like ERA or WHIP, or whatever else you want to use.
Wins are a good statistic for a team. After all, as you note, team success is determined by only one thing: wins. But wins are not a good stat for a pitcher, because they rely too much on the run support he gets.
Randy Johnson picked up 17 wins for the Yankees in 2006, which was the second-most of any Yankee starter that year. You know how they rewarded him for those wins? They let him go. Because his ERA was 5.00, and his WHIP wasn’t great either.
If you have a team that scores 7 runs a game, you might be able to get a bunch of wins out of a guy who gives up 5 runs every 9 innings. But that doesn’t make him a better pitcher than a guy who gives up 2.50 runs every 9 innings but who happens to play on a team with poor hitting.
Well, for the team, none. Wins are what the team wants. As for the pitcher, i’m more impressed by his 0.905 WHIP, his K/9 ratio of 7.5, his ERA of 1.96, and his ERA+ of 154. Even in the incredibly low offensive environment of 1968, that’s still an impressive performance.
No-one ever said batting average was irrelevant, just that it needs to be considered in conjunction with other things. While having a batting average up around .330 is really damn good, it’s not all that matters. Ichiro is up around .350, but his very low walk rate means that his OBP is about 15 points lower than Cabrera’s. And the fact that Ichiro is almost exclusively a singles hitter means that his SLG is a full 120 points lower than Cabrera’s. If a player like Ichiro doesn’t hit over .300, then he’s probably going to be a detriment to his team. The reason Cabrera is so good is that his high average comes with a good walk rate (and therefore very good OBP) and a bunch of power.
Is that a point for you or for me? Because I would think that keeping a young (extremely promising) arm out there would be a concern, rather than sticking Jamie Moyer out there for a high pitch count, knowing he’ll be drawing Social Security soon.
No you don’t. I don’t think you’ll meet anyone with a grasp on the subject that will say 100 is a magic number. 120 is a number that comes up extremely often by the experts.
It’s certainly not exact. And the Tigers staff seems to know what they’re doing, and do an excellent job of developing their pitchers. But you don’t load up innings on the new guys, you save their arms (and your investment).
Most power throwing starting pitchers start hitting their top numbers later in the game. Because he’s hitting 100 in the 8th is less a sign that his arm is looser (and thus more capable of lasting longer) - it’s a sign that his arm is getting too numb for him to feel the signs of fatigue.
Why do you mix team stats with individual stats? If you can assign a team stat to a pitcher, why don’t we start assigning them to batters as well?
Sabermetrics is an attempt to predict one thing. Can you guess what it is? It sets up and creates a bunch of statistics, all focused on one goal. Can you guess what that one goal is? Hint: It’s a stat that they feel is the most important stat to be counting in baseball - one that leads to the ultimate goal of a World Series. Have you guessed it yet, gonzomax?
The Red Sox now have 37 players on the active roster. Has anyone ever gone to the full 40?
Verlander’s an interesting beast. He throws as hard in the 9th inning as he does in the first. He could really be one of those Nolan Ryan-type of arms that can throw hard all day long on his scheduled starts and not think anything of it. There haven’t been any odd arm/elbow issues, there hasn’t really even been any fatigue issues of note. Hopefully nothing goes pop and we won’t find out that way (like Joel Zumaya).
Another complete game for Roy Halladay today, and a shutout to boot. He really is pretty damn awesome.
In somewhat lighter news, the Orioles lost their 13th in a row today. 
Tigers win. The magic number is 2. It could end tomorrow.7 to 2 today over Pavano. He lost to Bonine. You can not predict baseball very well. A rookie against a Tiger killer.
Did you have a look at the opposing lineup?
It was an impressive game against any lineup. Most major league starting pitchers, on any given day, would not put up that line against a triple-A team.
Of course Boston’s resting their starters and backing into the playoffs, but any day you throw a complete game shutout in the major leagues, you’ve had a hell of a day.
It’s unusual, but it’s been done. It used to be more common when teams were less interested (or, perhaps, less aware) about the disadvantages of having players start their service time earlier.
Fucking Dodgers.
Yeah, who was that AAA player they had at DH, anyway?
Woohoo Padres. 
San Diego has had something of a sparkling finish to the season, going 16-9 over the last month, and 25-16 since the middle of August. It’s been fun to watch.
I hope the Dodgers can pull it together, though, because i’ll be rooting for them once the playoffs start.
The guy who came back on exactly the day I said he did, if you care to go back and look. Check out his pace since, even with a few brief setbacks. 
Who made up the rest of the lineup Halladay dominated enough to get you to call him “awesome”? It was just like a split-squad game in Fort Myers out there. The road squad, at that. Come on, dude.
But Manny has all those great numbers! Boston was crazy to get rid of him. Clubhouse, schmubhouse, right?
The Dodgers, with Manny, have 93 wins and will win their division and very likely have home field advantage throughout the NL playoffs.
So, I mean, yeah. Manny has great numbers (OBP over .420!). Boston was crazy to get rid of him. Clubhouse, schmubhouse.
You’re funny.
Wow, you really have no clue, do you?
As RickJay correctly pointed out, any time you get a complete-game shutout against a major league team is damned impressive. And it’s not as if my description of Halladay as “awesome” was based only on last night’s performance. That was simply another in a long string of outstanding starts for him. It was his 4th complete-game shutout of the year, his third in the last month (including one against a full-strength Yankee lineup), and his 9th complete game for the season. I guess in your book that makes him merely average, because he’s not on a contending team, right?
Wow, do you really think that the Dodgers’ two losses to San Diego over the last two nights are the fault of Manny Ramirez poisoning the clubhouse? Tell me you didn’t really make that argument, please. Or perhaps you’re arguing that Manny poisoning the clubhouse is responsible for the Dodgers winning 93 games so far this season. Is that it?
You know that great “pace” that you mentioned for David Ortiz recently? You know how he’s been, according to you, good apart from “a few brief setbacks”? Well, it’s true that Ortiz has been OK the past month or so. Here’s his numbers for September:
.284/.390/.557
And here is what Manny has been doing for the Dodgers for the whole of the 102 games that he has played this season:
.294/.423./.541
I guess it’s appropriate that what qualifies for a “hot streak” for Ortiz is about the same as what Manny puts up every day. Manny has provided, in 419 plate appearances, almost three times as much value to his team as David Ortiz has in 610 plate appearances this year. I know which one of these guys i’d prefer to have on my team heading into the playoffs.
How is Boston ahead for getting rid of Manny, aside from saving a few bucks this season? They aren’t really any better a team since he left.
On the other hand, he was a huge factor in getting the Dodgers into the playoffs last year and helped this year, too, even with a long suspension. He’s an elite hitter and still a dangerous, game-changing force in the playoffs. He’s even been tolerable in the field. All true baseball fans can see that. Anyone who watches baseball would rather have Manny than Big Papi in the lineup right now.
Dude, relax. Life’s too short for that kinds of crap. And baseball-watching is too much fun/
It was a minor-league team he faced. :rolleyes: If you want to be impressed by Doc’s numbers against Pawtucket, go right ahead. But we all know you only looked at the numbers, not the game or even the box score, right?
The Manny-vs.-Papi numbers argument is your own invention and you’re welcome to it. If you can point to anyone ever suggesting that they’re equal as hitters, please feel free to take it up with them, m’kay?
Great Abner Doubleday’s Ghost, dude.