March 15, 2004
Phillies Phizzle?
This article relates some worries about the Phillies offense so far this spring. And yes, it's way to early to get too worried about their lack of runs. But one thing did strike me as interesting:
One of Bowa's stated goals this season has been to cut down on strikeouts. So far, so bad. The Phillies have whiffed 92 times in 12 games.
"That's a lot," Bowa said. "And Thome's not playing. You expect home-run hitters to strike out a lot and that's all right, because you expect them to do a lot of damage, too."
Will Bowa be able to achieve this goal by the end of spring training? If not, will Bowa blame the players or his own poor coaching for the phailure?
Update: Link works now.
Posted by David Pinto at
08:18 AM
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Offense
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Anyone interested in evaluating Bowa's concern about strikeout rates should read Ryan Wilkins' article over at Baseball Prospectus:
http://premium.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=2617
(It is a non-subscription article so available to all.)
Main point:
"From a quantitative perspective, however, there is little evidence to suggest that a strikeout is "worse" than a groundout, popout, or any other means of making an out, with respect to generating runs."
Yes. If Phillies run scoring is down this year, it's going to be because Bowa is sending players into inane hit & runs.
Time to double my prayers that he's fired before the season ends.
Bowa should be worrying about OBP. What a frickin' idiot.