A-Rod had 7 RBI in the 6th inning today. That’s a good inning.
I am convinced. 6 and 4 should win the Cy Young.
Which, of course, begs the very question: should Wins be the primary criteria for the Cy Young award.
Your ability to argue in circles is astounding.
Anyway, back to the baseball news: the Tigers managed to actually win a game, but the Twins stomped all over the Royals, leaving a one-game playoff on Tuesday to decide the AL Central champs. The game will be at the dome in Minnesota. According to the Twins website, it will be Rick Porcello for the Tigers against Scott Baker for Minnesota.
If Detroit loses, they will, according to MLB.com, become “the first team in history to be in first place on May 10 or earlier and remain on top until losing the title in the final week of the season.”
Was Zack Greinke’s spot in the rotation “modified to allow him to go up against weaker hitting teams?”
And it’s October already. 
The Rockies #2 starter threw three perfect innings yesterday, then walked the first two in the fourth and left the game with a groin injury. Their #1 catcher and important right handed bat, Yorvit Torrealba, didn’t play due to a hamstring injury, and three players, including centerfielder Dexter Fowler, didn’t leave the hotel due to the flu.
Bad, bad timing.
Of course not. It was just coincidence that their superstar pitcher was just available for bad hitting teams. Who could question an entire season of coincidences. No rainouts or anything must have occurred allowing them to put Grienke against a big team. Could they have pitched him against tough teams? You think about it.
Then when he went against Chicago at the end of the season in an important game he got spanked.
Who are the good hitting teams?
Wow, who knew Grandpa Simpson was a Doper?
By the way, anyone know how the TV rights work for the one-off decider on Tuesday?
Is it local networks only? TBS? FOX? Will it be available on MLB.com?
ESPN rates Kansas City’s defense as number 3 in American league. That is some help to a pitcher.
Could you point out to me, perhaps with a link, where ESPN says this, because i couldn’t find any such stat on their MLB pages.
Most errors in the AL, worst fielding percentage – what’s not to like?
gonzomax, who are the top hitting teams that Greinke avoided?
Yeah, I just saw that on the ESPN stats page and was wondering what metric could possibly put KC at #3 with those numbers.
By the way, gonzomax, while you’re looking up that ESPN reference for me, here’s some stuff for ya:
First, as Jimmy Chitwood noted, the Royals have the most errors and the lowest fielding percentage in the league. You can find that stat right here, at ESPN.
If you also check out Baseball Reference, you’ll find the same thing, plus you’ll also see that the Royals have the worst Defensive Efficiency in the league.
Defensive efficiency is the rate at which balls in play are turned into outs, and while it’s not a perfect stat, it’s a reasonably decent measure of a team’s defensive prowess.
Even when we compensate for the park they play in, the Royals are near the bottom in the Defensive Efficiency measures. This Baseball Prospectus table (you might need a subscription to view it) places them ahead of only the Athletics and the Blue Jays in the AL in Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency.
Then there’s this article, written just about two weeks ago for Baseball Prospectus. I’ll quote from it, in case the link doesn’t work for you:
Yeah, those Royals are awesome on defense.
How definitive. I decided to surf and check defensive stats. I got the Royals from 3rd to 2nd from the bottom. I checked a half dozen sites and no two agree.
I read "Hardball Times " everyday. They are stats junkies.
Theh Royals are a frigging awful defensive team. You can argue whether they’re worst, or second worst, or third worst, according to any number of metrics, but any metric and any observation will tell you they’re in the general vicinity of sucking.
Even if you don’t believe the statheads, their claims are visibly apparent; the Royals have a very slow outfield and Betancourt is a pretty bad shortstop with really, really bad footwork.
Watching the Rockies-Dodgers game this morning (Japan time) via the TBS broadcast. Their announcers were saying the one-game playoff was going to be on their network on Tuesday at 5:07pm (Eastern).
Sure.
You can check out what those Hardball Times guys have to say about team fielding here.
The main stat they use for evaluating fielding is RZR, or Revised Zone Rating, which measures “the proportion of balls hit into a fielder’s zone that he successfully converted into an out.”
According to that measure, the Royals have the worst infield (0.743) in the American League, and a middle-of-the-road (7th out of 14) outfield. When you add the two figures together, they have the worst overall RZR in the AL.
They also have, according to the same table, the worst Plus/Minus of any AL fielding unit, with -86. Their closest rival is Baltimore, with -55.
Now, where is that ESPN page where they place the Royals as the third-best defensive team in the league? Does it actually exist?
That’s your defense? The Royals are not the worst defensive team, they’re only the second or third worst defensive team?
Some defense. I think you may have missed the turn at second.