Brad Lidge’s bad start
Posted by Andy on May 18, 2009
Last year in 2008, Brad Lidge had an amazing season, finishing a perfect 41-for-41 in saves while striking out 11.9 batters per nine innings. His ERA was 1.95, close to a career best.
This year, it's a very different story.
He recently broke this horrible streak of most consecutive games by a reliever allowing at least 1 ER:
StreakStart Streak End Games W L GS CG SHO GF SV IP H R ER BB SO HR ERA HBP WP BK Teams +-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Brad Lidge 2009-05-05 2009-05-15 6 0 0 0 0 0 4 1 6 11 9 9 3 5 2 13.50 0 0 0 PHI Hunter Jones 2009-04-30 2009-05-13 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 9 8 8 4 4 2 14.40 0 1 0 BOS Jeff Fulchino 2009-04-21 2009-05-04 5 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 7.2 9 7 7 4 6 2 8.22 0 0 0 HOU Geoff Geary 2009-04-19 2009-04-28 5 0 3 0 0 0 1 0 6 9 6 5 3 4 1 7.50 1 0 0 HOU Wilfredo Ledezma 2009-04-06 2009-04-18 5 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 5.2 8 7 6 4 8 1 9.53 0 1 0 WSN Jesse Crain 2009-05-10 2009-05-15 4 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 2.2 8 5 5 2 1 2 16.88 0 1 1 MIN Kip Wells 2009-05-09 2009-05-15 4 0 1 0 0 0 2 1 5.1 7 7 7 6 4 1 11.81 0 0 0 WSN Geoff Geary 2009-05-03 2009-05-13 4 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 5.1 12 10 10 4 3 2 16.88 0 0 0 HOU Javier Lopez 2009-04-30 2009-05-09 4 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 4.1 11 9 9 2 2 1 18.69 0 0 0 BOS Eddie Bonine 2009-04-06 2009-04-23 4 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 8 16 8 8 2 5 3 9.00 0 0 0 DET Jose Veras 2009-04-11 2009-04-18 4 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 4.1 4 6 6 4 3 1 12.46 0 0 0 NYY
His strikeout rate (9.7 per 9 IP) is still good so far this year but his walk rate (5.4 per 9) and hit rate (12.4 per 9!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) are career-worsts so far. Oh and his HR per 9 is 2.7 per 9 innings, as compared to a career value of 0.8.
Looking at his career splits, June and July have typically been Lidge's best months, allowing the lowest opposing BA and OBP.
Let's see if he can turn things around.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:47 am
This is a good example of why "strikeout rate", defined as "strikeouts per nine innings", is not very useful. If "strikeout rate" were defined as "strikeouts as a percentage of batters faced", Lidge's poor start would be more evident. In '08, Lidge sruck out 92 of the 292 batters he faced (31.5%). So far this year, he has fanned only 18 of 85 (21.2%). Shown another way, Lidge faced only 4.21 batters per inning in '08, while he has faced 4.90 batters per inning so far this year. And as successful as Lidge was last year, he was much more dominant in '04 with the Astros. That season, he struck out 157 of the 369 batters he faced (42.5%), and faced only 3.90 batters per inning.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:53 am
yeah that's a good point. Another place where innings are not all equal is in terms of number of pitches. Not all 7-inning performances are the same. Some guys get through 7 innings in 80 pitches, and for others it's 140.
May 18th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
If I remember correctly, Greg Maddux once got through 9 innings (CG) with just 88 pitches!
Btw, I think there's erroneous #pitches data in the database; when I was searching for this game [using From 1954 to 2009, Complete Game, (requiring Pitches>=1), sorted by smallest pitches in a game], the Pitching Gamelog Finder reported that Phil Niekro pitched a 9-inning CG on 9-22-1979 with just 11 pitches - WOW!
May 18th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
And he has another CG a couple weeks earlier with only 44 pitches. I assume that for some reason there is only pitch data for selected plate appearances. But it is misleading to present those totals as the count for the entire game. I don't know how easy it is to go through and find all those instances and delete them.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
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