Friday, May 14, 2010

Bulls Pitching




The Bulls ought to be in Columbus, Ohio by now and possibly getting in a nap before game time. We are exactly seven times through the starting rotation, so let’s take a look at our pitching.

The top chart is the cumulative Fielding Independent Pitching and ERA numbers for the team as a whole. The last 20 games are plotted. Also plotted is a trend line for the FIP. I’m hoping that the statisticians among you don’t go nuts at plotting what amounts to a trend of a trend. But it does help illustrate the fact that our pitching has not been all that great the last 20 games. We have won 9 and lost 11 of those games and certainly the pitching contributed. On the other hand, you can see a distinct tick downwards that started before our last two wins. That’s a very good sign.

The second chart shows the individual pitchers’ FIP along with the team FIP. Easy to see why the Heath’s (Phillips and Rollins) are a concern. Otherwise, we know (hope) that Aneury Rodriguez is improving among the starters and similarly that De Los Santos may be settling down. Please note that the sample size, especially for relievers, is very small, so these numbers aren’t very useful except as a snapshot of where we are at the moment.

An oddity is that only four saves have been recorded. That’s because we have had very few close games. Only 7 1-run games, and we lost 5 of those. Another indicator of pitching performance is shutouts. We’ve only had one of those, a Rodriguez, De Los Santos, Thayer game back on April 20th.

The last chart is a sorted graph of strikeout to walks ratios. That's just for the heck of it since over at RaysProspects they just put up a table of similar data and we thought they might like to see what it looked like in a picture, at least for the Bulls.

Much more useful, except that we’ll never hear them, would be the opinions of Xavier Hernandez or Charlie Montoyo. Too bad we won’t hear anything but cliches from them. Actually, I don’t recall X. ever speaking on the record about anything.

7 comments:

  1. If you are so tired of Montoyo's cliches then maybe you'd rather speak to someone else that would be so kind to a blogger with a press pass. Don't bite the hand that feeds. He may not read your blog...but I do.

    Sincerely, Mrs. "Cliche"

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  2. I guess in my effort to be a bit clever I’ve managed to be misunderstood. Let me try again.

    I don’t have a press pass, so I can’t ask either key person a question. If I did, they probably wouldn’t answer because there’s absolutely no upside to doing so.

    The point I was trying to make is that all the numerical analysis in this post pales alongside the professional judgment of men like Charlie Montoyo and Xavier Hernandez.

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  3. Does this mean that Sam can get Chris a press pass? That would be great.

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  4. I may not be able to get the press pass but I do have some interesting insight on Montoyo's personal email...since he is my husband

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  5. Sam - I would be careful with that email address around here...

    In all seriousness, though, I can say that I have a huge amount of respect for what your husband does for the Bulls, and I imagine most other folks here do as well. At times there is some comments about his lack of quotes and things of the sort. Speaking for myself, I wish he would say more about the team and the players because I know that he knows much more about baseball than I do and I would learn alot from what he has to say. But, I also know that his job isn't to entertain and educate me.

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  6. Well, welcome to Watching Durham Bulls Baseball. Here’s hoping that you find the blog interesting and amusing. Further, I hope you don’t mind accepting my, and I am sure that of all of WDBB’s readers, sincere concern for you and your family during the trials you have been through over the last couple of years. And our fondest hopes that things are going to keep on getting better. It was really, really wonderful to see your son at the DBAP last month.

    Keep watching. Keep us honest.

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