Box Score Bytes - Game 35

- Great article in the Post this morning about calling out O'Dowd.  Thanks Kiszla for making the connection that this team, as constituted, is his and not the coaching staffs problem.  Back in the Spring during FanFest, I sat in on the management panel and while I came away impressed by the knowledge of the constituents, I can't help but reconsider after the dismal start about what it means to talk stats and sabermetrics.  Problem with the Rox is they are masking their mistakes by convincing themselves with numbers that they have found some hidden gem.  It was like when the question was asked about fly balls and how Rox went after some homer prone pitchers (Guthrie and Moscoso) and if this was a shift in philosophy of the type of pitcher that might work at Coors.  Instead of just saying we needed arms and we took what we could get due to salary issues O'Dowd talked about how these guys are fly ball pitchers but that their fly ball percentages in the field of play was what mattered not the fact that they had fly balls over the field of play.  This type of number spewing would suggest someone is trying to convince themselves rather than face up to the truth.  I think at this stage in the game most Rox fans know that convincing a pitcher to come here is useless.  Sure you might find an old retread worth a season or two but the real pitching comes from within.  

- To continue my O'Dowd bashing, as fans we were told we were bringing in quality guys over the guys we jettisoned last year.  Therefore Smith and Wiggington were sent off (and well Lopez too).  Numbers below compare our new character guys (which by the way cost us a whole lot more money) through about 35 games.  Cuddyer costing us about $10M when Smith was still cheap.  We still have a black hole that is 3B and well 2B is still not contributing a whole lot to the bottom line.  Where is the uproar?  More money spent but no production changes.  Slick marketing O'Dowd, bring in some flashing names and all of your problems are solved.

		R	HR	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
RF	Smith	18	2	0.274	0.330	0.453	0.783
	Cuddyer	19	4	0.278	0.336	0.476	0.812
3B	Wiggy	6	2	0.231	0.301	0.385	0.686
	Nelson	4	0	0.219	0.313	0.288	0.601
2B	Herrera	11	1	0.289	0.395	0.381	0.776
	Scutaro	21	1	0.259	0.315	0.333	0.648

- Off my soapbox.  Nice win, sort of, last night.  Let's not forget we had a 4-1 lead before our bullpen almost imploded.  All that early use starting to wear on the arms?  Guess they are real excited about coming home.

- How hard has it been to win?  Rox get three gift errors (by the way Pacheco should have scored on that popup error and well a healthy Tulo should have had an inside the parker) and yet we still barely won that game.

- Scutaro's WPA for that homer equal to 0.354.  You could say he singlehandedly won that game

- Worse statistic in baseball?  Gotta be the hold. Outman got one (great name by the way) even though he gave up 3 runs and left with a tied game instead of the lead..