Rox Talk - Week 2

The Week That Was

A 3-3 week against the Mets and Braves. The Rox currently stand at 6-6. Two games back from division leading San Francisco in second place. Currently 4-2 at home and 2-4 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 58-48 (expected wins is 7 versus historical wins at 6). On pace for 81 wins with 783 runs scored and 648 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.21 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Two weeks in and a .500 record. What to think about this team 12 games in? As any self respecting fan I expect this team to be 12-0 but 6 - 6 isn't too bad. Are they playing great? No but they are playing good enough to be in most games (really only the 5-0 defeat to the Mets and the 9-5 lost to the Braves were the only games not winnable). April is just one of those months. The real kicker is that our offense which is supposed to be our strength really hasn't turned it on. Besides CarGo, Stewart, and Hawpe (40 of team's 108 hits, 19 of team's 54 RBIs and 6 of the team's 14 HR) the rest of the team is anemic. Throw in the fact that two of those players have been sidelined with slight injuries and it is probably amazing we have 6 wins. All in all I think we are in a good place. Plus we aren't going through the growing pains of a new season against divisional rivals. Nice to get the Giants and Dodgers when the kinks have been worked out! This is a distant run not a sprint. Although in a week's time if we didn't take 3 of 4 against the Nats and win 2 of 3 from the Marlins I am going to be angry!

No Hitters

Are we enjoying a Goldern Era of rare occurrences for our Rox (of course this paper would suggest statistically we should expect these things)? What I mean is that in the last 3 years we have witnessed an unassisted triple play (2007), a cycle (2009), and on Saturday night the Rox first no hitter.

On Saturday night Jimenez had the 264th no hitters all time from (1876 - 2010). To compare there have been 680 triple plays in that time and 288 cycles. It is amazing and somewhat jaw dropping to think in that time there have been approximately 390,762 games. What an event. Read more about no hitters here - retrosheet or wikipedia. Some other interesting tidbits:

- 33 have been thrown since Rox existed

- Rox have been no hit twice (have fielded 2 triple plays but batted into 3 and have batted 5 cycles)

- Rox first no hitter occurred in Game 2703. Hope we don't have to wait another 2500 games for the next one...you are talking about someone who is probably 5 or 6 years old right now!

- U-Ball game score of 88 moved him into the Top 5 of Rox pitching performances

Tulo has seen it all...when is the perfect game?