Wednesday wrap-up: Twins, Greinke, Loney, Crawford, and more
Posted by Andy on May 26, 2011
(Here is John Autin's wrap for the earlier Wednesday games.)
I’m filing this early, since I have a “Night at the Smithsonian” -- OK, it’s really the Morgan Library. The point is, I may not get to the night games, so here’s a quick look at the afternoon action.
-- Seattle 3, Minnesota 0: 17 straight scoreless IP for Erik Bedard. 38th straight game missed by Joe Mauer. 6th straight game of negative WPA for Justin Morneau. Among AL clubs, the Twins are dead last in every measure of production from the catcher position, and in the bottom 1/3 at 1B. Three times has Minnesota won 3 in a row this year; those wee streaks were followed by losing skids of 6, 9 and 4 games. Today’s shutout was only their 5th this year, but it was the 37th time in 48 games that they were held to 4 runs or less, most in the majors. (Seattle is 2nd with 36.) The Twins are 3-12 in “blowout” games. For the M’s, it was the 6th shutout win and the 21st time they allowed 2 runs or less; they’re 18-3 in those games. Ichiro went 0-4 with 2 strikeouts today; he’s hitting .281 and slugging .320 (8 doubles, 0 triples, 0 HRs). His OPS+ is about 96 so far, 10 points below his worst full-season mark. (He also has a negative dWAR at this point, though that sample is too small to be meaningful given his career marks. Still, we all get old someday.)
-- Texas 2, White Sox 1: Despite a DL stint, Neftali Feliz now has 10 saves and a 1.13 ERA, allowing 2 runs total in 16 IP. So he’s pitching great, right? Um ... let’s come back to that one in a month or so. Feliz has issued 14 walks (1 or more in 9 of his last 11 games, with back-to-back 1-out walks of Quentin and Konerko today), and has just 8 strikeouts. His previous career rates were 2.3 BB/9 and 9.9 SO/9; so far this year, his walk rate is tripled and his K rate cut in half. Small sample, yes, but combined with the DL stint, it’s something to watch for the 2010 AL Rookie of the Year.
-- Atlanta 4, Pittsburgh 2 (11): Brooks Conrad, who always seeks to wind up either the hero or the goat, pinch-hit a 2-run HR in the top of the 11th. Johnny Venters pitched 2 more hitless innings, extending his streak to 12 IP in 10 games since he last allowed a hit. (Question: If he carries the streak to 18 IP, can we call him “Double No-Hit”? He’s got the right initials for it.) Venters has allowed 9 hits in 30.2 IP this year. His career rate of 5.64 H/9 is 3rd among all pitchers with at least 100 IP; Neftali Feliz (5.15) is the leader. Venters has an 0.59 ERA this year. Daniel McCutchen, who pitched a scoreless inning for the Pirates, has an 0.42 mark (1 ER in 21.2 IP). Atlanta used 5 relievers; each came out of the game with an ERA no worse than 2.63. Erstwhile SP Jeff Karstens took the loss; he’s allowed 9 HRs in 45.1 IP.
-- Brewers 6, Nationals 4: The last time Zack Greinke hit a HR (back in 2005), he was strafed for 3 HRs, 11 runs and 15 hits in 4.1 innings. Today, he balanced his chores somewhat better. Greinke fanned 10 in 7 IP, allowing only a 3-run shot by the suddenly red-hot Mike Morse, and hit his 2nd career HR, breaking a 3-all tie in the 5th. He now has 6 hits in 32 AB, with 2 HRs and 2 doubles. Ryan Braun was on base in all 4 trips, and Prince Fielder drove in 4 with a pair of hits, increasing his MLB-best RBI total to 41 (and breaking a tie with Braun).
-- Cleveland staged their customary late rally at home, but they waited just a little too long to get started and fell to Boston, 14-2. It was a get-well day for the BoSox bats; Carl Crawford picked up 4 hits, including a HR and 2 doubles, jacking his BA up to .229. Drew Sutton (“D. Sutton” and batting 9th in your box score) collected 3 hits with a brace of doubles for Boston, his 3rd club in as many years. (His full name is Stephen Drew Sutton; are they trying to confuse me?) [note from the editor, Andy, who posted this for John--the automatic player linking tool got confused too, by putting in that link to Steven Drew!]
-- Houston 2, Dodgers 1: Worst thing about the injury to Andre Ethier? It’s moved James Loney up to #3 in the batting order. Yikes. Loney went hitless and remains stuck on 1 HR, with a .287 slugging average and .286 OBP. I understand loyalty ... is it really worth it to try to nurse Loney back to what he was, given that he was a poor hitter for his position to begin with?
May 26th, 2011 at 7:23 am
Addendum to the wrap-up...
The Reds lost a nineteen-inning marathon -- to, of all people, WILSON VALDEZ !!! Maybe the scrub infielder has found himself a new career?
May 26th, 2011 at 10:54 am
I didn't realize how bad the Twins were struggling until I looked at their record the other day. "Egads!" I thought. "They MUST be better than that." Apparently, they are far, far worse.
May 26th, 2011 at 10:56 am
Frank -- Wow, marathon is right! Let's see what else we can mine from that Reds-Phils game:
-- Philly used 9 pitchers, counting the professional mound debut of Wilson Valdez, who retired 3 of 4 batters, including Joey Votto and Jay Bruce. Valdez started the game at 2B and went 3 for 6 with a walk, and RBI and a sacrifice. I can't figure out how to get the Play Index to yield the last "irregular" pitcher to get a win, but I'll bet Jayson Stark has that info. Anyway, I guess the Phils are carrying "only" 7 relievers; they brought Valdez in to pitch after....
-- Danys Baez went 5 innings on 73 pitches. It was his time exceeding 3 IP or 51 pitches since 2002, when he was a starter.
-- Raul Ibanez drove in the game-winner on a sac fly. It sure seems that sac flies are playing a bigger role in scoring than in any recent year, but that's probably just anecdotal observation.
-- Jay Bruce tied the game in the 7th with a 2-out, 2-run single off Halladay, then homered leading off the 10th against lefty Antonio Bastardo -- just the 3rd hit Bastardo has allowed this year in 23 AB against lefties. But in the bottom half....
-- Ryan Howard tied it up again by launching a 1-0 pitch from Francisco Cordero over the CF fence. In extra innings, Howard has 8 HRs and 23 RBI in 78 AB, with a 1.149 OPS. He also has a 1.024 OPS in high-leverage situations, homering in 8.9% of ABs.
-- Another probably unsupported observation: Doesn't it seem that a lot of extra-inning games feature both teams scoring in the same inning?
-- The Reds' Carlos Fisher threw 5 scoreless innings before yielding the winning run. He was briefly the MLB leader in most IP without allowing a run this year (10 IP); the new leader is Jose Contreras, currently on the DL, with 8 IP.
-- Placido Polanco went 1 for 8 and registered a WPA of -0.327. But his sac bunt in the 19th moved the winning run to 3rd with 1 out. WPA does consider the bunt in that situation to have improved Philly's chance of scoring, but only by about 3%. (Keep in mind that WPA only measures according to the base-out situation; the identities of the batter, the pitcher and the on-deck batter are no factor.)
May 26th, 2011 at 11:21 am
In other Wednesday games:
-- Marlins 7, Giants 6 (12): What are the odds? -- Florida's #3-4-5 hitters each has an OPS over .900 in late May, but none of them is Hanley Ramirez. The transcendent troika is Logan Morrison, Gaby Sanchez and Mike Stanton. Stanton has been on fire for 2 weeks; in his last 12 games he has 6 HRs, 14 RBI and a .386 BA. His 3-run double with 2 out in the top of the 9th gave the Marlins a 6-2 lead, but closer Leo Nunez was tagged with his first blown save of the year and earned every bit of it. Nunez came on with 1 out and 2 on and allowed 4 hits, 3 of them after 2 out. The winning scored on (yes) a sacrifice fly by Emilio Bonifacio. Each team's biggest star (Hanley Ramirez and Buster Posey) left the game with an injury.
Gaby Sanchez, who ran 4th in last year's crowded NL ROY field, has a .322 BA, .404 OBP and .500 SLG this year. Three qualifying hitters in franchise history have attained the coveted ".3/.4/.5" mark (a.k.a. Pythagorean triple -- or am I just making that up?): Hanley Ramirez in 2008-09, Miguel Cabrera in 2006-07, and Gary Sheffield back in 1996. Logan Morrison is at .313/.410/.586 this year, but is well shy of qualifying for the batting race due to missing 21 games with an injury.
May 26th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
-- Baltimore 8, KC 2: Luke Hochevar threw 6 scoreless innings for the Royals; unfortunately, he allowed 8 runs in his other frame (7 ER). I have no way to measure how unusual that is, but I'm betting it's about as rare as a no-hitter. Hochevar had the ground-ball machine humming and cruised into the 4th having faced 1 batter over the minimum. He surrendered 6 hits and 3 walks in the 4th, then calmly retired the last 10 batters he faced. He got 17 of his 21 outs on ground balls, with 1 DP, and one grounder thrown away.
Hochevar was the first pitcher to allow 8+ runs and last 7+ innings since 2009, when Josh Beckett yielded 8 runs (and 5 HRs) against the Yankees in a Sunday night ESPN game.
May 26th, 2011 at 12:15 pm
So, John, did you actually watch the Giants/Marlins game?
I would think possibly losing Buster Posey for a couple of months would merit mentioning.
May 26th, 2011 at 12:23 pm
John mentioned Posey's injury in comment #4 above.
May 26th, 2011 at 1:50 pm
@6, Chuck -- As I noted in the intro, I was not able to watch baseball last night, and I was not aware of the severity of Posey's injury when I posted. Obviously, a major injury to Posey is big news, and Giants fans (including you?) must be quite bummed out. You have my sympathy.
When I do get my B-R blog running, I will make a general statement of intent. But FYI, as far as these recaps go, I have no intention of being a first-order or even second-order news provider like ESPN SportsCenter or what Buster Olney does in the back end of his columns. My intent with the recaps is to use B-R tools to wring as much interesting info as I can, in a limited timeframe, from the box scores and play-by-play accounts themselves. All I saw in the play-by-play was that Posey left the game with an ankle injury, so I noted that. If you're expecting more detail than that from my threads, I'm sorry, but you're going to be disappointed.
May 26th, 2011 at 10:47 pm
@8 JA, let me quote a friend (who was recently lamenting the lack of a decent RSS feed of MLB recaps) when he said about your updates: "This is very close to what this world needs." I concur, and am very much looking forward to your blog launch!
May 26th, 2011 at 11:46 pm
Also of note from 5/25 in the Mets-Cubs game:
Justin Berg entered the game in the 2nd inning with the score tied 4-4, one out and runners on 2nd and 3rd. 12 pitches later he was removed, having walked all 3 batters he faced without throwing a single strike. James Russell relieved him and struck out the first 2 batters he faced to end the inning and prevent Berg from being charged with any runs.
May 27th, 2011 at 11:08 am
Fair enough, John, just asking.