September 04, 2002
Diamondbacks:
Dan Bickley thinks the Arizona slide will toughen them up for the playoffs. He points out that after this weekend against the Giants, they have a pretty easy schedule. Apart from 3 against St. Louis, they don't play a team with a winning record. Still, there are some older players on this team, and I've been wondering for two years if they were going to break down.
The one person I can't figure out is Steve Finley. He's old (38), and he wasn't that good before he came to Arizona. If you look at his four years with San Diego, and compare them with his four years in Arizona, something interesting comes through:
Home SD AZ
BA .260 .292
OBA .325 .369
Slug% .418 .521
Road
BA .291 .256
OBA .342 .328
Slug% .494 .475
He's been helped tremendously by the BOB, while his road number show an overall decline (he's somewhat made up for this with more walks and more power). I have to wonder, when will he reach the point where he fades enough that the ballpark no longer helps him? Coming into tonight, over his last 10 games, he was hitting .229 with 0 HR and 1 RBI. Of course, the whole team is hitting only .202 over that time period (11 games) so he's actually doing well relative to his teammates.
Things went much better tonight. Johnson pitched a gem, took 107 pitches for a complete game 7-1 victory, the only run being Green's 40th HR. Finley went 2 for 4 with a HR and an RBI. The lead is back to 5.
Posted by David Pinto at
08:43 PM
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Baseball