Chris Young: Another rough outing for Chris. He had a couple of effective innings but left too many balls up in the zone and had a lot of trouble controlling his slider. When he doesn’t have the slider I’d like to see him go with fastballs almost exclusively rather than continue trying to get the slider under control. He’s been effective in the past with fastballs only, and there’s less chance of hanging one in the middle of the plate.
When that slider is working CY can be devastating. It’s still a fairly new pitch for him and he should get better with it as the year goes on. These growing pains will pay dividends later in the year.
Tony Clark hit two home runs against CY. Matt and Mud suggested that the 6′9″ Clark is negates the height advantage CY normally enjoys. An interesting theory but it could just be that CY didn’t have it tonight.
Doug Brocail: Doug came on in the 6th and got out of a jam with a liner to short and a grounder. Nice job once again.
Justin Hampson: Poor 7th inning by Hampson. 2 hits, 1 walk and 1 stolen base. Eric Byrnes helped him out by getting thrown out by a mile on some kind of blown play. Byrnes showed a total lack of class by mouthing off to the first base coach and throwing a mini tantrum in the dugout.
Surprisingly, Hampson came back out for the 8th and looked better. 2 grounders and a fly ball to left.
2 responses so far ↓
1 TheGrandHatching // Apr 27, 2007 at 10:41 am
2 things:
First, let me just say that this is an awesome new website. I think what you do is invaluable. Thank you.
Second, have you ever gone about digging up the stats on NL pitchers’ ERA (or whatever stat you choose) when they were the final out of the previous half-inning? My intuition is that those innings will produce a significant deviation from their mean. This, of course, would reflect a reduced energy level or lack of focus or whatever a pitcher would otherwise retain by sitting on the bench.
One pitcher’s ERA would obviously be more sensitive to this statistic than another’s.
Chris Young (again, intuitively) seems particularly prone to this effect. I get worried every time I see him drag his 6′10″ 260 lb trunk down the first base line, accounting for the third out of an inning. Last night may be a case in point. After grounding out in the top half of the second, he went back out on the field and proceded to give up three runs (showing a visible lack of control).
Is there something valuable here? Is it a robust enough effect to keep an eye on?
2 Anthony // Apr 27, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it.
You raise an interesting question. It’s something that’s often mentioned but as far as I can see there haven’t been any studies on the effect of pitchers running the bases. I don’t know if it’s even possible to break down the data in the way you suggest. One possibility is to break it down by how many times the starter strikes out in a game, the theory being that he doesn’t have to run if he strikes out so the ERA should be lower. If I can figure out how to load Retrosheet data into a database and query it I’ll try to come up with a way to look into your question.
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