Rox Talk - Week 3

The Week That Was

A 4-3 week against the Nationals and Marlins. The Rox currently stand at 10-9. Game and half back from division leading San Diego in third place. Currently 6-3 at home and 4-6 on the road, the Rox have outscored its opponents 93-72 (expected wins is 12 versus historical wins at 9). On pace for 85 wins with 793 runs scored and 614 runs against. Playoff indicator (Runs scored/Runs Against ratio) is 1.29 (>1.16 indicates high playoff potential).

Considering the emotional roller coaster, the team played remarkably well last week. Sure they probably should have won another one in DC and it would have been nice to sweep the Marlins but with the unexpected passing of team president, Keli McGregor, early last week I think a winning record for the week was OK.

Without considering last week, although the trend continued, it seems to me that the team is just going through the motions. I realize it is April and there is a lot of baseball left but they just seem up and down. Nice game followed by a ho hum lost. They don't seem to be building on anything. With a bunch of division rival games coming up in the next two weeks I think they need to start playing with a bit more fire. Pitchers need to get it going.

First Inning

A 162 game schedule can easily be broken into "9 innings" of 18 games a piece. Over the years I have tracked monthly averages and I am always amazed how similar the averages are. So this year instead of months I am simply tracking 18 game stretches to see if anything changes. The spreadsheet below shows the first inning.

The team was 9 - 9 overall. Record was a bit low considering their runs scored/runs against differential. This can mostly be seen in the bullpen's 1 - 3 record. Jimenez was a monster with Stewart and Olivo leading the offense. Pitching was night or day. Four games had game scores above 70 and yet we also had some clunkers in there too. Nice start...last year the record was 7 - 11 (although 9 - 9 in 2008).