Rays Drop Magic Number To 29
THE TELLING: The Rays magic number is now 29 with 34 games remaining.
DEVIL RAYS WEBTOPIA...
- Yesterday's win was Joe Maddon's 206th as manager of the Rays, giving him more wins than any manager in club history...Again, we are not sure why the official count includes 2 wins from '06 when Maddon left the team to be at his girlfriend's graduation. [St. Pete Times]
- Missed this in the early post...The Immaculate Inning was on hand once again to chronicle David Price's third triple-A start...This time with camera in tow. [The Immaculate Inning]
- The Houston Chronicle takes a look at Andrew Friedman and his rise from a kid that would ride the opposing team bus to games at the Astrodome as a kid. [Houston Chronicle]
- The Chicago Tribune has a story on how both the two biggest payrolls in baseball may both miss the playoffs. [Chicago Tribune]
posted by The Professor at 12:23 PM
1 Comments:
So who is the best pitcher on the Rays this season? Actually its not easy to choose. If we use Baseball Prospectus (BP) technique of Pitcher Expected Win-Loss record (assuming a neutral offence), the pitchers expected winning percentage are:
Kazmir: 0.597
Jackson: 0.595
Garza: 0.568
Sheilds: 0.526
Sonnanstine: 0.503
First of all – all pitchers are now above average (Sonny being the one who has picked up the most recently.) Note Jackson has pitched well.
But what if you ask – which pitcher is mostly likely to put the team in a position to win the game by taking the expected number of wins and dividing by games started:
Kazmir: 0.386
Jackson: 0.412
Garza: 0.420
Shields: 0.411
Sonnanstine: 0.356
In short – all pitch about the same, maybe Sonny is the lone weak point, but Garza gives you innings and is likely to win.
Another note: From yesterday, the bases were loaded – Aki’s bases loaded walk against LHP Thorton was very impressive (13 pitches), but also important was Pena’s hit against Thornton. I would like to say Aki’s walk and the miscue by Orlando at short on Uptons bouncer might have upset Thornton who is the ChiSox better reliever. Pena’s hit was very important because Pena does NOT hit lefthanders. His numbers versus RHP are: 271/389/570, and vs LHP are: 184/290/353. Ozzie was correct to use Thornton vs. Pena.
I looked a number of players and many have significant differences in their numbers between RHP and LHP. More later… the game is on.
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