April 18, 2006
Games of the Day
I was hoping for a Chacon/Chacin rematch, but the Toronto sophomore draws Randy Johnson instead. While Randy's strikeouts are down a bit so far this season, he's yet to issue a walk in 20 innings. Couple that with a .213 BA allowed and the Big Unit's had an effective three starts. Randy will deal with one of the season's hottest hitters in Vernon Wells, owner of a loud twelve game hit streak.
The Tigers travel to the West Coast to face Esteban Loaiza and the Oakland Athletics. Esteban is off to a terrible start; both lefties and righties are hitting over .400 against him. He's also allowing extra-base hits; given that the Tigers are leading the league in slugging percentage, that's a matchup they like.
Enjoy!
Posted by David Pinto at
12:18 PM
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I know it's early, but what so you make of the Yankees leading the AL in team ERA, especially with all the talk of Shilling and Beckett starting 3-0?
Given the Yankees offense, Vic, I'm surprised they've lost with the ERA that low.
It has been quite surprising. In fact looking at individual statistics, it's hard to see exactly how the team's ERA remains so low. Much of it has to do with the fact that Wang, RJ, and Mussina's eras so far have ranged from stellar to solid, and the three of them have combined to throw the most innings. Meanwhile the two most-used relievers, Proctor and Villone, are also off to great starts, and combine for 12 innings of 3 run ball.
In fact, the 5 of them combine for 70 of the Yanks' 103 total innings, and post a combined ERA of 2.95. If you add Mike Myers' 5 scoreless innings, it's 2.76. Meanwhile Farnsworth, Rivera, Wright, Chacon, and Sturtze combine for about 27.2 innings (I think the missing 1/3 comes from Rivera's BS) with a combined ERA of 7.15.
So I think the answer as to why they've lost so many games with such a strong team ERA is that Villone, Myers, and Proctor are the only pen guys who have been good. You can't throw them all the time, but Torre has tried, and the result is that the successful 6 pitchers have thrown 70% of the innings.
All this really shows is that there haven't been enough innings to show too much. A close look at how drastically different one half of the Yankee staff has been compared to the other shows why their record stands the way it does, since it probably took some time to figure out who was reliable and who wasn't.
PS: Since Vic menioned Beckett and Schilling, it's worth noting that with 13 more innings under their belt, Boston's ERA is only .12 behind New York's. With a closer look at their staff, we'd probably see a similar trend of a few pitchers (Schilling, Beckett, Wakefield, Papelbon, Timlin, and DiNardo off the top of my head) carrying the bulk of the innings and dragging down the ERA. Right now it looks to me as though W/L is still based a great deal on luck, rather then ERA and runs produced.
