Team Hitting: 5R, 7H, 2XBH, 4BB, 3K
This is more indicative of a normal baseball game and not quite the video games numbers we had become accustomed to. Let’s dig in: Jose Constanza (1-4, 2B, R, 2RBI) and Wes Hodges (1-4, 2B, R, RBI) were the stat stuffers for the night and Carlos Santana (2-4, R) continued his utter dominance of all the pitchers he shouldn’t be facing in AAA. If you put any credence into the idea that a catchers game calling significantly influences a pitcher’s outing, you can be enthused that Santana called a game that saw nearly twice as many strikeouts (13) as base runner’s (7). The threat of his arm, and the lack of anyone on base to begin with, prevented the Bats from attempting any steals. I don’t know when Santana’s “game-calling” knowledge will be enough for management to be willing to bring him up, but I imagine it will coincide nicely with his service clock and pushing arbitration back a season.
Team Pitching: 3(3) R(ER), 3H, 1 HR, 2BB, 2HBP, 13SO
Lewis pitched well, generating 15 SO/9 is good no matter how you slice it, but there is a small cause for concern as he had just a 1:7 GO:FO. He is a fly ball pitcher, yes, but a fly ball pitcher generates about 50% FO, not 87.5%. Small sample? Obviously. Something to continue to monitor? Certainly. Josh Tomlin came in and pitched about as well as you could hope for, retiring all 6 batters in 21 pitches while racking up a pair of SO’s. Gosling continued his overall shakiness by giving up the pitcher’s version of TTO (Three True Outcomes, most often used in reference to Jack Cust, Rob Deer and Adam Dunn’s PA’s) by yielding a HR, BB and SO (and a HBP to boot, FTO!) in a lackluster 9th to finish things out.
Carrasco looks for his 2nd win on the season as the Clippers host the Bats for the 2nd game of the series tonight at 6:35. Also, as a treat, those who have SportsTime Ohio will be able to watch the game LIVE on TV tonight.
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2 comments:
I'm assuming that Lewis didn't allow many line drives as the hit count was so low. I kind of wish that K%, FB% GB% and LD% were more widely used as they're better indicators of a pitchers overall performance.
As long as his FB:HR rate stays low and he's not giving up many drives he's probably going to be ok.
10 K's?! What an outing!
While LD% for pitchers vary somewhat significantly from team to team, they don't vary significantly amongst the same staff, which indicates that defense is the primary determinant of LD%, not the pitcher himself. HR:FB (*typically shown this way so that it can be converted into a percentage) falls into the same camp and is almost completely independent of a pitcher's talent. The league average is ~11% and it varies extraordinarily little over the long-run. HR:FB is similar to BABIP in this regard.
Fangraphs.com has a pretty good article about how extreme groundball (GB 55%<) pitchers have a marginally higher HR:FB and extreme fly ball pitchers (GB <35%) have a marginally lower HR:FB. While counter-intuitive, the difference found in this study was minimal. As fly ball pitchers had a HR:FB of 9.9% and the ground ball artists clocked in at 12.2%. So, trying to say that a pitcher can significantly alter his own HR:FB rate is probably not realistic. The best bet is to give up fewer FB's (increase the GB's!), strike more guys out and avoid walks so the inevitable HR's don't hurt as much.
Glad to have someone else on board with the rate stats! Look for an article on the AAA guys and all their wonderful (and not so wonderful, in some cases!) stats very soon....
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