May 04, 2008
New ERA
The Oakland Athletics staff allowed one run today as they defeated the Rangers 3-1. That lowers their team ERA to 3.19. That's a pretty remarkable number. Since the explosion of offense in 1993, only eleven teams posted ERAs under 3.50, all in the National League. The last American league team to post an ERA that low was the 1992 Milwaukee Brewers, at 3.43. Since the introduction of the designated hitter, only 37 AL teams posted ERAs under 3.50, and the Athletics did it the most, nine times.
What makes it even more amazing, this is a rebuilding year for Oakland. Rich Harden is hurt again, and Joe Blaton has the highest ERA among the regular starters. The Athletics low ERA may be the biggest surprise of 2008.
Posted by David Pinto at
11:01 PM
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I was noticing a couple days ago that the A's are fighting for 1st at the beginning of May and scoring more runs than almost every AL offense....in their "rebuilding year" too. It'd be nice to see them keep it up. I didn't realize their ERA was so low though! WOW! Seems Billy's teams keep ticking everytime I think they need a battery change
What's really weird is how far the American League OPS has settled below the Senior Circuit's: .723 vs. .740. The difference is almost all in slugging percentage. Not surprisingly, the NL is outscoring the AL on a per-game basis, and pretty easily.
The DH is such a powerful force that I think the AL will eventually overtake the NL in OPS and runs scored per game (the two are almost perfectly correlated, of course). Only once in the DH era has the NL outscored the AL per game - more than thirty years ago in 1974, and just barely so.
The A's may maintain that low ERA all season, but I doubt it. Sooner or later, facing nine hitters instead of eight takes its toll.
It seems like the AL is playing more winter ball than the NL - also look at Hafner, Sheffield, Giambi, Ortiz, Thomas - all these teams that loaded up on these aging prototype DHs are getting nothing from them
I think the NL lead in OPS and runs scored per game is just a artifact of small sample size, which will reverse over the course of the entire season.
Although some DH's in the AL are struggling, the overall OPS for designated hitters is still slightly above the league-average OPS. As the year goes on, I think the designated hitters' margin above league-average will widen. Last year DH's compiled an OPS 44 points above league-average for the AL. I doubt that things have changed so drastically in one season.
Winter ball? Don't have any numbers, but I can't see it as a major factor. At times this year, the AL has been ahead of the NL in OPS and runs scored per game. I expect that the powerful effect of the DH will send the junior circuit ahead once again by year's end.
I have no idea how to measure this, but what about the difference in the overall level of pitching between the Al and NL? Could it be that the AL just has dramatically superior pitching across the board, and this is holding down the better hitting teams in the AL versus the NL?
