May 18, 2005
Games of the Day
If you'd like to spend the afternoon watching offense, the Reds-Mets game may be the place to be. It's a battle of high ERA lefties as Eric Milton bring his 7.21 ERA to Shea to face Tom Glavine and his 5.77 earned run average. Glavine turned in his third good performance of the year against the Cardinals in his last start. But overall, Glavine has as many walks as strikeouts, and he's walking one every other inning. That combined with a .309 batting average allowed has been pretty deadly for the veteran.
Milton is coming off a drubbing at the hand of his former team, the Phillies. Once again, home runs are the problem. He allowed 43 last year in just over 200 innings. The 14 he's allowed this year put him on a pace to allow 64 over 200 innings. Of course, if he continues to pitch this badly, it's unlikely he'll be around to toss that many frames.
Atlanta and San Diego resume their battle of the first place teams as the Braves send Horacio Ramirez to face Adam Eaton. With their win last night, San Diego now has the best record in the majors in 1-run games, 12-3. Eaton has pitched well, but he's also need help from the pen as he's averaged less than six innings a start. Ramirez is not striking out batters. His 3.74 per nine is below the point most pitchers are successful. Luckily, he has a defense behind him that is very good at turning batted balls into outs.
Finally, Milwaukee at Washington offers two teams doing better than expected. The Nationals are in third place, only two games back, and the Brewers are in 2nd place in the NL Central, five back of the Cardinals. Esteban Loaiza has pitched well but not won this season. He's only allowed 21 runs in his eight starts, but the team has only scored 13 times when he's on the mound. Esteban is going to need to start throwing shutouts. The Brewers are 6-2 when Chris Capuano starts, although he's not always around for the decision. He's been solid, but the Brewer's great bullpen has helped him out. The Milwaukee pen has posted a 2.28 ERA in Capuano's starts, allowing just 18 hits in 23 2/3 innings.
Enjoy!
Posted by David Pinto at
10:54 AM
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re: Millwood and Milton
well, at this point of the season, you have to say that dumping Millwood and Milton, and their salary demands, were both good moves by the Phils.
Meyers has blossomed, Lieber and Lidle have both done a good job, Randy Wolf while inconsistent, has had some good outings, and so now their only problem is waiting for Padilla to find his good fastball and curve, which seem to be missing in action this year. The 5th starter continues to be a problem for the Phils. Gavin Floyd, incidentally, was far from ready, although given how bad the veterans are in the bullpen, I'd give him some bullpen duty if the season doesn't turn around soon in a month or two after he's had some starts in AAA. They really need to cut Worrell and Adams loose or trade them for younger prospects.
Eric Milton started out last year very well; he nearly had a complete game no-hitter that I watched on TV where he fell apart in the 9th, though the phils won it in the end. That was a beautifully pitched ballgame. It is inexplicable why he's doing so badly this year.
He really needs to be out in SD or OAK where a fly ball doesn't always go out of the park, being the extreme fly ball pitcher that he is. Cincinnati and Phila are not good homeparks, although i don't have the home and road breakdowns on his homeruns. But the night games in the west coast, mostly homers don't go out as much. He'd do better in OAK for sure, or for the LAD or Padres or Seattle.
--AJK