Rox Talk - Week 1

The Week That Was

A 3-3 week against the Brewers and Padres. The Roxs currently stand at 3-3. Two games back from division leading San Francisco in third place. Currently 2-1 at home and 1-2 on the road, the Roxs have outscored its opponents 29-22 (expected wins is 4 versus historical wins at 3). On pace for 81 wins with 783 runs scored and 594 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.32 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Rox are 10 - 8 in opening day games and 11 - 7 for home openers. What to think about a 3-3 week out of the gate? Team certainly looked a bit rusty. The defense was not sharp (5 errors), offense inconsistent, and the starting pitching pretty much accounted for the 3 wins (Jimenez and de la Rosa). The bullpen overall is settling in...although Morales makes me nervous! One week doesn't make a season although it would have been nice to sweep the Padres and losing two to the Brewers was tough. The Brewers are probably a top end team and Rox have only had one winning road record in their history so I wouldn't expect to win an opening weekend away from home. In the end I think if Rox can tread water through April (0.500 record) and keep division leaders in sight I would be happy. Historically the team has played 0.460 ball in April for an average 10 - 13 record (2009 8 - 12, 2008 11 - 17, and 2007 10 - 16). Bottom line is they can't afford to spot a division rival 6 - 8 games in April. Wins count in April too, you don't get bonuses for winning down the stretch ;-)

Extra Inning Affairs

Game 5 of the 2010 campaign featured this year's first extra inning game. Against the Padres no less which got me thinking, is it me or do we seem to play the Padres a lot after 9 innings? The quick answer is that the Padres do figure in two of the most memorable extra inning affairs 1) Game 163 in 2007 which sent our Rox into the playoffs and 2) Game 15 of the 2008 season which lasted 22 innings and took over six hours to play!

Using data collected here, I have found that our Rox have played in 185 extra inning games from 1993 - 2009. This comes out to about one in every 15 games. About 11 extra inning games occur in a year with more accounting at home (1 every 13 games) then away (1 every 16 games). Rox record in extra innings is 91 - 94 (0.492) which is better than their overall record (0.476). One of the strangest stats is the Rox are 41 - 61 (.0402) at home and a whooping 50 - 33 (0.602) on the road. Compare this to their all time record where they are 0.552 at home and 0.399 away!

Additional extra inning trivia:

- Most Wins (Herges and Reed)

- Most Losses (Fuentes and Reed, note T. Hoffman has 5 losses)

- Game 23 has the most extra inning occurrences at 6

- Extra innings occur the most on Tuesdays (34 times) followed by Sunday (32), Friday (30), Monday (24), Saturday (23), Thursday (23), and Wednesday (19)

- 45% of the extra inning games end at 10 innings, 28% in 11 innings, 14% in 12 innings, 8% in 13 innings, and 3% in 14 innings (one game each at 15, 16, 18, and 22 innings)

- Average extra inning game is 215 min vs 174 min for a 9 inning game

- May and June have the most extra inning games at 70. (Odd finding is that June Friday games have had 10 instances...management trying for extra food sales...and why do they end alcohol sales at the end of 7?)

- Best winning percentage against an NL opponent is Mets (6 - 3) and worse Milwaukee (2 - 5)

- And finally an answer to my first question about seemingly always playing the Padres in extra innings...well, in fact we have faced the Padres 26 times in extra inning affairs (the most of any team) by comparison the next is LA (18 times), followed by Arizona (16 times), and then Washington/Montreal (12 times). In those 26 games the Rox are 14 - 12 (6 - 12 against LA, 7 - 9 against Arizona,and 7 - 4 against Giants).