Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
July 20, 2004
Game of the Day

I'm going to keep my eye on the Phillies at Braves this evening. Eric Milton takes the mound against Jaret Wright in this battle of former American Leaguers. Milton has not pitched as well as his record indicates. The Phillies are scoring for Eric, giving him 7.27 runs per 9 IP, second highest in the NL. That's helped Milton survive the 21 HR he's allowed. If you look at Milton and Wright, the biggest difference between them is their HR allowed:

2004MiltonWright
ERA4.623.34
IP109105
K8487
BB4444
HR216

I also read that the Braves surge started with Chipper moving to third base. The problem with this argument is that Chipper has hit worse since moving to third base. They should say that the surge came when slugging Charles Thomas was inserted into left field. This gave the Braves the power they needed, and somewhat improved offense at third, as DeRosa was useless as a hitter.

Meanwhile, we'll see what kind of moves Bowa makes tonight. If the Phillies lose, I expect the criticism to build.

Enjoy!


Posted by David Pinto at 11:58 AM | Games | TrackBack (0)
Comments

Chipper has played in 29 games at 3B so far. The surge is more recent than that. So the ESPN stats include games in June, when he'd come back from his injury. In July, Chipper is hitting .268/.388/.536, with 9 runs, 3 HR, and 14 RBI in 15 games. Those are better monthly numbers than any month other than his hot start in April.

Posted by: Tung Yin at July 20, 2004 01:57 PM

Despite the fact that Charles Thomas has 3 HR, he's hardly a "slugging" OF... he hit for average in the minors, but not a lot of HR. He's a good hitter, though, and has a lot of speed - between him and Giles returning, the Braves are a lot of fun to watch lately.

Posted by: Brian at July 20, 2004 04:08 PM

re: Mark DeRosa & Chipper Jones

(1) Mark DeRosa

Mark DeRosa, as we all know, led Penn to two Ivy League titles as their quarterback. I am a proud graduate school alum of penn and was taking courses there back in 93 when DeRosa was playing QB and that was one of Penn's greatest teams ever, they decimated Harvard that year to win the title outright.

However, in baseball, DeRosa is not a regular player. He's a good part-time shortstop/3B who destroys Left hand pitching, and can fill in for short spells, but as a regular, he tends to sink over time.

Point being, there's a talent gap between Ivy League football and major league baseball.

(2) Chipper Jones - I agree with Dr. Pinto's analysis on Chipper. The Braves improved by cutting their losses at 3d and by bringing a better bat to LF.

However, if Chipper arises from his slump, the move will look even better. In any event, Chipper Jones at 3B is like Eddie Matthews at 3B--a proven slugger. Why would you play him elsewhere??

--AJK

Posted by: Art Kyriazis at July 26, 2004 02:06 PM