July 04, 2007
Complete Blanton
Joe Blanton pitched a complete game four hitter last night, holding the Blue Jays to one run as Oakland took the game by a score of 3-1. It was an unusual outing as Bob Geren allowed Joe to finish the game despite walking a batter with two out in the ninth as Blanton approached 120 pitches:
After a brief conference, Geren showed confidence in his bulky right-hander and allowed him one more batter. That's all Blanton needed.
Blanton (8-4) threw a four-hitter for his AL-leading third complete game and the Oakland Athletics won for the third time in four games, beating the Toronto Blue Jays 3-1 on Tuesday night.
"I told him it's my game and I wanted it," Blanton said of the mound visit. "He actually came out to ask me how I felt. If I was gassed I would have said so."
Blanton's home/road split is rather remarkable.
| Blanton 2007 | Home | Road |
| ERA | 1.69 | 4.48 |
| Innings | 64 | 64.1 |
| Strikeouts | 40 | 44 |
| Walks | 11 | 13 |
| Home Runs | 5 | 5 |
| Hits | 39 | 71 |
As far as fielding independent stats go, Blanton is the same pitcher home and road. For some reason, however, 32 more hits landed in about the same number of innings away from Oakland. I know the Coliseum is famous for lots of foul territory, but is Joe inducing that many foul pop outs? Or is the hitting background in Oakland just bad?
Posted by David Pinto at
09:08 AM
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Interesting. It seems two specific starts are responsible for blowing up his road numbers when it comes to hits - Tampa on May 6 (11 hits), and Baltimore on May 27 (10 hits). As for his ERA, again, two starts seem to have been bad... Chicago on May 21 (6 R's in 5.1 IP) and Baltimore on May 27 (8 R's in 6 IP). Besides that, he had a mediocre start in April, which happened to be road games.