Ken Griffey, Jr. hits a two-run homer in the first to put the Reds up 2-0 (Bruce singled in front of Griffey). That gives Ken 599, and Fox will cut into his plate appearances to see if he hits 600. Phillips followed with a big fly of his own, and the Reds lead the Braves 3-0 in the first.
Chipper Jones singled in the top of the inning to raise his BA to .412.
Glendon Rusch pitched a poor outing against the Cubs today, lasting just 4 2/3 innings while giving up five earned runs. Over their last nine games, the Rockies received only one good start. Including Rusch’s number from today, the Rockies starters in that time are posting an 8.10 ERA. They’ve allowed 24 walks and 11 home runs in their last 50 innings. The Cubs lead 5-3 in the sixth inning.
For the third day in a row, the White Sox and Rays present a good pitching matchup. Javier Vazquez takes on Scott Kazmir in the Scrabble game. Lefties are hitting .314 against Javier, and the Rays can put five lefties up against him. Kazmir has yet to allow a home run in his first 30 innings pitched.
Rickey Nolasco tries to put the Marlins back in first place as he faces Cole Hamels and the Phillies. Rickey is very good at keeping the running game in check as opponents are just 3 for 6 in stolen base opportunities. The Marlins might run on Hamels as he’s allowed seven steals in eight attempts. Of course, they need to get on base and Hamels opposition OBA is a very low .271.
Finally, on the west coast the Blue Jays and the Angels send us Shaun Marcum against John Lackey. Marcum’s been especially tough to hit in May, allowing a .142 BA and a .231 slugging percentage. Lackey’s low ERA is due to allowing batters one hit in ten at bats with runners in scoring position.
Enjoy!
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The Red Sox placed Daisuke Matsuzaka on the disabled list Friday with a strain in his rotator cuff:
“There was no structural changes, which is really good news,” Francona said. “The final diagnosis is a mild deltoid rotator cuff strain. The best way we can see to attack this is we’ll DL him, take the time down, strengthen him, get him ready to pitch the rest of the season. That’s kind of where we are.”
The article also notes that while Dice-K is not a leader in pitches per start, he is among the leaders in pitches per inning.
Here’s a graph of Chipper Jones’s probability of hitting .400 after each day the Braves play. The X axis show day number, of if the Braves play a double header, both games are rolled into that day. For example, 50 isn’t the 50th day of the season, it’s the 50th day the Braves played. Putting the dates didn’t fit well, and my software left gaps when Atlanta had a off day.
Also, for some reason Excel keeps putting the X axis at the top of the graph when I try to switch to a logarithmic scale. Still this should give you a good idea of how hot Chipper was before the 0 for 5 Friday night. Click on the graph for a larger view.
Update: Brian Harper was able to convert the data to a log graph. Many thanks! Each step up represents a ten-fold increase in the probability.
Yesterday was pretty much the first day of the season I didn’t pay attention to what was going on during the games. Here’s what I missed.
The Chicago Cubs came back from an 8-0 deficit to defeat the Rockies 10-9. The ball was flying out of Wrigley as the two teams combined for seven home runs.
Chipper Jones went 0 for 5 to reduce his batting average to .409. Jay Bruce went 4 for 5 to raise his batting average to .571. The Braves lost another one-run game on the road as the Reds took the game 3-2.
The Phillies offensive machine is in full gear as they pounded the Marlins 12-3. Florida scored all their runs in the top of the first, but the lead was gone quickly as the Phillies scored seven in the second. Utley retakes the ML lead in home runs with his 18th of the season. More importantly, Philadelphia takes over first place in the NL East.
The Red Sox took 13 innings to defeat Baltimore 5-2. The Orioles left the bases loaded in the bottom of the 12th. The Orioles struck out 17 times in the game, 10 against Beckett in the first six innings.
Baltimore falls to last place in the AL East as the Yankees take down the Twins. Mike Mussina and a Shelly Duncan error led to a 4-1 Twins lead after one, but the Yankees fought back to take the game 6-5. Bobby Abreu hit two triples. and scored four runs. Matsui went 3 for 4 with two RBI as he continues to be the hottest hitter on the team.
The Boston and New York wins allowed them to keep pace with the Rays, who took another tight game at Tropicana Field. They defeated the White Sox 2-1 on a walk-off home run by Cliff Floyd. That’s the Rays sixth win at home this year in which they scored two runs or less.
The Royals lost a close one 5-4 to extend their losing streak to 12 games. They blow an early four-run lead as Cleveland gains on Chicago.
The Rangers pick up ground on both Oakland and LAnaheim as they get a well pitched game from Kevin Millwood and win 3-1. The Angels lose to Toronto as Overbay hits two home runs, and now four games separate the top three teams in the AL West.
The Giants turned a triple play, but lose to the Padres 7-3 in the second 13 inning game of the night. The Giant fail to gain more ground on the Diamondbacks, who lose their fifth game in a row. They fall to Washington 7-4 as Micah Owings gives up six runs.
The Dodgers do gain as they hang a 9-5 loss on the Mets. Kershaw pitches poorly for Los Angeles, but the bullpen, led by Chan-Ho Park allows one run the rest of the way and the Dodgers score five in the 8th to win it.
In the Central, St. Louis keeps pace with Chicago as they withstand a three run rally by Pittsburgh in the ninth to take a 5-4 win, and the Brewers heart was beating strong as Fielder, Cameron and Braun homer in a 5-1 win over the Astros.
And so they don’t feel left out, the Mariners wasted two Adrian Beltre home runs as they fell to the Tigers 7-4. Carlos Silva allows seven runs in the first inning and his ERA is now 6.00. Nice move by Bavasi there.
My daughter Melinda graduated from high school Friday night. I just wanted to say congratulations! We’re very proud of you, Melinda.
The Day by Day Database is up to date.
Luke Scott gives Tyler Kepner a visual lesson on the sweet spot.
The top umpire in baseball talked with the Houston Chronicle about using replays in baseball:
“Replay is coming,” Rieker wrote. “If done properly we have an opportunity to set the gold standard in replay, learning from pros and cons from other sports. But we must do so in a fashion that will not delay the game further.”
Rieker was asked if the home plate umpire would be the one to use the replay.
“Probably not,” he wrote. “Use of a possible replay official could come into play and we really don’t want to take the umpires off the field to look at replays.”
A fifth umpire in the pressbox? I still like the idea of the umpires having a handheld device that delivers replays to their hands. It should be easy to do with something like an iPhone.
The big NL East showdown starts tonight in Philadelphia as Florida comes to town. I hope Phish phans aren’t conphused. The Marlins lead the Phillies by 1/2 game in the NL East, with Florida losing two in a row and Philadelphia on a four game winning streak. Mark Hendrickson opposes Brett Myers. Hendrickson has not gone deep in games his last four starts, averaging less than five innings. He’s letting his pitching count climb early, putting pressure on the bullpen. Myers return to the rotation has been a rocky one. He’s allowed 15 home runs this season, a rate of 45.9 per 200 innings. Of course, pitchers who allow home runs at that rate rarely get 200 innings. These are the top two home run hitting teams in the majors, so expect some fireworks.
The White Sox and Rays continue their battle of first place teams with Jose Contreras facing James Shields. While a lower home run rate contributed greatly to Contreras’s success, he also lowered his walk rate as well. He’s walking 2.1 per nine instead of his career average 3.2 per nine innings. Shields shows a huge home/road split this season, favoring his performances in Tampa Bay. He’s allowed a 1.75 ERA at home, 6.04 on the road.
The Texas trails Oakland by 2 1/2 games as the Athletics come to town for a three game set. Young and Kinsler have hitting streaks of 14 and 13 games respectively, but they are weak streaks. Both are batting under .300, and Young’s OBA during the streak is .292. The Rangers send Kevin Millwood against Justin Duchscherer. Duke is doing everything right for the A’s this season, posting good strikeout numbers with a low walk and home run rate. Millwood takes advantage of the Texas offense at home to go 2-0 in Arlington despite a 5.40 ERA.
Enjoy!
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The Giants completed a sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks Thursday night. Randy Johnson out-pitched Barry Zito, The Big Unit leaving with a 3-2 lead after seven innings. San Francisco, however, scored a single run in the 8th on a bases loaded walk and then Winn homered in the ninth to seal the victory.
Giants pitching dominated the series, allowing three runs in each game. That fact that the Giants won with that type of pitching performance is big news. Coming into the series, San Francisco was 1-4 in game in which they allowed exactly three runs. The Major League record when allowing three runs 155-86, a .643 winning percentage, so the Giants are returning to the mean as their offense picks up.
| Runs | Record | Winning Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 93-0 | 1.000 |
| 1 | 141-14 | .910 |
| 2 | 170-44 | .794 |
| 3 | 155-86 | .643 |
| 4 | 108-106 | .505 |
| 5 | 61-126 | .326 |
| 6+ | 81-433 | .158 |
The Cubs defeated the Rockies 8-4 Thursday night, and now own the best record in the major leagues. Chicago is the only team playing .600 ball, with a current winning percentage of .600. What’s interesting to me about the win, however, is that the game wasn’t close. Both teams picked up eleven hits. The Rockies did have two fewer base runners, as they walked three times while the Cubs drew one more walk and had a batter hit. Chicago picked up one more total base, 17-16. Each team committed two errors.
Missed opportunities played a huge role. The Cubs hit .250 with runners in scoring position, 3 for 12. That’s nothing to write home about, but the Rockies were just 2 for 17. Mostly, the Cubs did a better job of concentrating their hits. The Rockies only had two innings with multiple hits, while Chicago put together four such frames. Sometimes it’s all about timing, and that hurt Colorado in this game.
The Day by Day Database is up to date.
The Mets 1-5 batters hit tonight like New York fans expected all year. Reyes, Castillo, Wright, Beltran and Delgado all recorded multi-hit games, going 11 for 21 with a walk. Wright’s two hits were both home runs, and he drove in half the Mets runs as they took down the Dodgers 8-4. These five keeping up that level of offense will go a long way toward saving Willie Randolph’s job.
They Twins extended the Royals losing streak to eleven tonight, 5-1. Only two doubles in the bottom of the ninth prevented the game from ending in a shutout. It’s the sixth time during the streak that Kansas City was held to one run or less.
The Twins are now 18-9 against their central opponents, the best record in the division. They just don’t do well playing the east and the west.
The Astros fell to the Cardinals tonight 3-2. The offense carried Houston to the best record in the National League in May, but they could not come up with enough runs to support Oswalt in a well pitched game. The eventual winning run came on Roy’s bugaboo all year, the home run. The shot by Albert Pujols was the 16th allowed by Roy this season, two more than in 2007 and two shy of his career high.
The Hardball Times shows that no only is Oswalt is inducing fewer ground balls and more line drives, but fewer of the balls in the air are coming down over the the infield. He could easily double his career high this season. The Astros missed a golden opportunity to tie the Cardinals for second place in the division and the lead for the Wild Card.
Paul Konerko is one of the players responsible for the power outage in the American League this season. Over his previous fifteen games, Konerko was not only batting .169, his ten hits turned out to be all singles. He finally showed some life tonight against the Rays, going two for four with a home run as the White Sox won 5-1. Konerko’s and Thome’s poor starts are one reason the White Sox may be able to hang on for the AL Central crown. At some point their likely to regress toward their career averages, improving the White Sox offense as they do.
Over his previous three starts, Phil Dumatrait walked 13 batters while striking out eight. His ERA was okay, however, allowing eight earned runs in 16 1/3 innings. Tonight against the Reds, however, he turned that around. Dumatrait struck out nine and walked just two over seven innings, holding the Reds to two hits and one run. The Pirates took the game 7-2. He’s had other performances where he showed good control, so the next step will be repeating that kind of control.
The Pirates also held Jay Bruce hitless in three at bats, proving the rookie is human after all. 🙂
Troy Percival goes on the disabled list with a strained hamstring:
Percival, 1-0 with 14 saves in 16 chances and a 2.95 ERA, limped off the mound during the ninth inning of Wednesday’s 5-3 victory over the Texas Rangers. An MRI exam revealed no significant damage, however the AL East leaders don’t want to take any unecessary chances with the 38-year-old right-hander.
It’s not clear who will fill in as closer.
I’ll be on The Night Shift, Sports Radio 610 in Houston at 7:20 PM EDT (6:20 PM CDT).
Ryan Langerhans is back with the Nationals and just made a possible game saving catch in San Diego. With the score tied at two in the bottom of the eighth, Kevin Kouzmanoff launches one to the stand in leftfield. Ryan leaped, got his glove over the railing, and pulled the ball back in to preserve the tie. He’s also singled and driven in a run.
Update: The catch is for naught as Jody Gerut hits a three-run homer down the rightfield line for a 5-2 lead.
The Blue Jays are pounding the Athletics this afternoon, off to a 10-0 lead in the sixth inning. It the first time the Jays reached double digits in runs in a game since April 15th when they scored eleven against Baltimore. Six of the starters collected multi-hit games so far.
Litsch is making another good start, walking just one through 5 2/3 innings, and keeping the ball in the park.
The Braves made short work of the Brewers today, defeating them 8-1. The Braves had two pitchers on today. Starter Jorge Campillo pitched five strong innings in his third start of the season after a stint in the bullpen. He walked none and struck out six, bringing his K total to 33 in 36 1/3 innings with just five walks. Manny Acosta gave his fielders an innings and a third off as he struck out all four Brewers he faced in relief.
Chipper Jones ends the day two for three with two walks to finish with a .422 BA. All those walks help Chipper to .400, as it keeps the denominator of his batting average low.
During my radio show Wednesday night, I discussed the Red Sox pattern of use of Daisuke Matsuzaka. Looking at his log with pitch counts, the Red Sox seem to be more interested in limiting his innings than his pitches. In two of his best starts, he lasted seven innings. In one of those he threw 111 pitches, so I can see him coming out, but in the other, he threw just 96. Why not let him go 115 pitches when he’s throwing well?
In his two high pitch outings, on 4/13 and 5/22, he pitched poorly, walking six in each game. Now, there are many theories on what pitch counts mean. One that makes sense to me is that pitching fatigued leads to injuries, since it’s more difficult to keep your mechanics right.
13 April 2008: Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka as the Red Sox defeated the New York Yankees 8-5 Sunday night at Fenway Park in Boston. MA. Dice-K threw 116 pitches in the game and walked six.
Photo: Icon SMI
Now, I’d like to suggest that walking lots of batters is a sign that a pitcher’s mechanics is off. Now, maybe the umpire had a narrow strike zone, or maybe the opposing team was particularly selective. Walking a lot of batters, however, should throw up a red flag that the pitcher may not have everything together that day. So in the two games where walks indicated that Matsuzaka’s mechanics were off, he threw the most pitches.
The start before he left with an injury was one of those, 118 pitches in a game where he struggled with control. I understand that Dice-K has a history of being able to throw a lot of pitches, it just seems to make more sense to allow him high pitch counts when he’s throwing well rather than when he might be struggling with his mechanics.
The latest Blog Poll is up, this week looking at National League awards.
A week ago I looked at the probability of Chipper Jones hitting .400 for the season based on what he already accomplished, and posted a spreadsheet for future calculations. Last Thursday the probability stood at .000095. Chipper is still well over .400 at .418. He went 9 for 18 on the week with five walks. He’s lowered his expected AB for the season to 562 from 585. The fewer AB Chipper gets, the easier it is for him to hit .400. That raises the probability of him hitting 400 for the season to .0004, or about four times higher than last week.
Update: Chipper singled in his first at bat today, raising his batting average to .422.
Update: Jones now 2 for 2 and batting .425. The Braves lead the Brewers 1-0 in the fourth.
MetsBlog.com posts video of Pedro in his rehabilitation start. He’ll likely start next week against San Francisco. That’s a good team for a comeback, since they’re not very strong offensively.
Bleed Cubbie Blue notes that after the Cubs sweep, the Dodgers and Cubs are .500 over 118 years, 1010-1010.
I thought about this and these two franchises have traded periods of dominance. When the Cubs were a great team in the early years of the 20th Century, the Dodgers were horrid. When the Dodgers were winning ten pennants in the 20 years from 1947-66, the Cubs were awful.
Randy Johnson
Photo: Icon SMI
The Blue Jays and Athletics finish up their low scoring series with another good pitching matchup as Jesse Litsch faces Dana Eveland. Litsch represents another good example of how a low walk rate can compensate for a high home run rate. Eight of the nine home runs he allowed came with the bases empty. Eveland comes from the opposite direction. His walks don’t hurt him very much since he allows few hits and home runs.
We might see a playoff preview today as the White Sox travel to Tampa Bay for a four game series. Chicago holds a two game lead over Minnesota, and the Rays lead the Red Sox by three in the AFILC. Danks has a good ERA and a poor record. The White Sox lost two of his May starts by a score of 2-0. Edwin Jackson takes the hill for the Rays, and is another pitcher who has benefited from the power falloff in the American League. Last season his home run rate was 23.6 per 200 innings, this season that’s down to 13.4.
Finally, the Giants go for a sweep of the Diamondbacks with two lefties on the mound, one an old man and the other pitching like one. Barry Zito picked up his first win his last time out. He’s actually been effective in May, posting a 3.22 ERA despite a 1-2 record. He’s still walking too many batters, but he’s cut down the number of hits allowed. Johnson is hitting his stride. In his last two starts he’s struck out 15 batters in 13 innings, walking one and allowing one run.
Enjoy!
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