10 Game Recap: Searching for Silver Linings

As promised, here is our 10 game wrap. For this, our inaugural edition, we decided to look at some raw statistics to see what they tell us about our dismal 3-7 start.

Hitting
PA	R	HR	RBI	BB	SO	AVG	OBP	OPS	ISO	K:BB
339	36	11	34	22	56	.232	.286	.707	.190	3.65

Not a lot of surprises here, we just aren’t hitting and more importantly, we’re not getting on base. A positive note, though, is that when we are hitting, we’re hitting for a pretty decent power (note: Isolated Slugging of .190). Even this positive sign is due in large part to a four home run performance on Monday, capped off by this welcoming present from Mr. Tejada.

Our hitting woes are a surprise to say the least. This team has been heralded all off-season long as one of the best line-ups in the NL. Lance’s career .412 OBP always gives reason to be optimistic, but Carlos Lee (.341) and Miguel Tejada (.343) do not have the track record of getting on base. Balancing the good with the bad, we wanted to find a reasonable prognostication about our team’s ability to score runs. In this pursuit, we decided to use a metric called RC/27. It’s an approximation of the number of runs, per 27 outs (the length of a ball game) a player or team is creates. In 10 games our hitters (the hitting stats above exclude pitchers, for the purpose of solely analyzing what the men who are paid to hit the ball are doing for us) have manged 36 runs, which is an average of 3.6 runs/game (tough math, I know). I am using PECOTA’s projections to come up with our projected RC/27 score. Though there are many formulas for RC/27, most just trying to be more and more precise, I used the quick and dirty formula of:

RC= 25xOBPxSLG / (1-AVG)

The projected values for our lineup (including bench players, but Kaz Matsui is excluded because he has not played yet):

OBP: .344 SLG: .437 AVG: .274

This yielded a RC/27 of 5.17. So clearly, we have been vastly under performing at the plate, but we clearly are bound for a regression to the mean -- i.e. something’s got to give. Regardless of notions associated with clutch hitting, luck is a big part of hitting. Hit ‘em where they ain’t may be an old baseball axiom, but it’s very much true. Line drives are often caught, while bloop singles go for RBI’s just as frequently it seems. This offense has a track record of success. Regardless of regression due to age, or questionable lineups, it should (based on our projections) start to hit better, and score more runs as a result.

Starting Pitching
IP	W	L	K	BB	K/9	K:BB	BABIP	ERA	E(W)	E(L)
58	0	4	36	18	5.59	2	.303	4.03	1.9	3.7

For all the talk about how bad the starting rotation was going to be this year, through 10 games, it has been the one bright spot on the club. Even with Roy Oswalt’s hip being a purple bruise and Chris Sampson struggling through the flu yesterday, we’ve put up solid numbers. Brandon Backe went toe to toe with Chris Young and Carlos Zambrano, and kept us in the game both times. Wandy Rodriguez bounced back form a rocky outing in San Diego, and has pitched over nine innings of scoreless ball in a row.

The vacancy in the win column is a testament to our bullpen’s ineptitude. The E(W,L) values are slightly skewed, namely because of both Roy and Chris’s rotten starts. E(W,L) cannot be read as though you were looking at a W-L column, quickly said, it is the expected win share a pitcher earned for getting through X number of innings having allowed X number of runs, determined by the number of wins and losses pitchers through out history have earned with the same IP and RA. The good thing to note is that our BABIP is close to the mean, meaning that should our rate stats stay as strong as they are, then this just might be the way things will go.

Relief Pitching
IP	W	L	SV	K	BB	ERA	BABIP	K/9	K/BB	H/9	BB/9
27	3	3	1	19	12	5.67	.379	6.33	2.03	12.33	4

Like we said last night, this team has been built around hitting and strong bullpen, and just like hitting, the bull pen has STRUGGLED. Just like hitting though, it appears that bullpen is also do for a regression to the mean given their absurdly high BABIP of .379 reflected in a astronomical H/9 of 12.33. While the other rates stats haven't been phenomenal, expect them to improve slightly, but not much. Just expect the bullpen’s BABIP’s regression to the mean to make all the difference in the world.

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