Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 28, 2008
Games of the Day

The Pirates travel to New York as aces Ian Snell and Johan Santana do battle at Shea Stadium. Snell has pitched much better than his 4.45 ERA. His strikeouts, walks and home run allowed (just one) indicate he should be having a pretty good season. His ERA is 1.42 runs higher than his FIP, possibly indicating bad luck. Batters are hitting a high percentage of line drives off him, and his defense isn't turning balls into outs very well. He also has an extremely strange platoon split. A right-handed pitcher, lefties are hitting .194 against him, righties .403 in equal numbers of at bats.

Johan Santana is doing pretty much what's expected from the ace. He's recorded lots of strikeouts, few walks and fewer hits than innings pitched. In 2007, however, home runs hit off the lefty rose, and that rate doesn't appear to be a fluke as Santana continues on pace to allowed about 30 home runs in 200 innings.

On the west coast, the battle for first place in the AL West commences as the Oakland Athletics open a four game series with the Angels in Anaheim. The series kicks off tonight with Chad Gaudin facing Jon Garland. It was the Angels who were supposed to dominate in pitching, but right now the Athletics own the lowest ERA in the American League by 0.4 runs. The Oakland staff has done a great job of keeping their walks and home runs low, and Gaudin is a good example of that. He walks one batter every four innings and allows a home run every twelve innings.

Garland is the victim of a strikeout rate that fell off a cliff. He's only struck out four batters in 30 1/3 innings this season, the lowest rate by far in the majors. This has led to lots more balls in play, many more hits (a .336 BA allowed) and more power (a .516 slugging percentage allowed).

The Angels strength is their offense, which ranks second in the AL in runs per game at 5.0, 0.4 runs better than Oakland ranked sixth. We'll see if Gaudin's good pitching can beat the Angels good hitting.

Enjoy!

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Posted by David Pinto at 08:35 AM | Matchups | TrackBack (0)
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