This is a great division the O's are young and have talent swarming, the Blue Jays are tough and hanging around an the Sox, Yanks, and Rays are battling for essentially two playoff spots. Unlike my colleague Mike I know bullpens and closers and probably the most important thing to have especially down the stretch and in the playoffs. Ask the Mets recently, or the Braves in the 90's. Or the Angels when K-Rod exploded on the scene.
Yankees
Offense- they are putting up runs despite A-Rods injury and slump and Texs slow start. If you think A-Rod will struggle all year you are retarded and Texeira is known for his second halfs. Cano is stroking and is also a second half player and with New Yankees Stadium the new Coors Field they will lead the league in runs. Gardner is a burner and was a top prospect in their farm and expect him to continue to hit. While Swisher has come back to Earth he is a good locker room guy. And of course Jeter will hit and hit
Starters- Despite early struggles Burnett and Sabathia are looking like the money the were paid. CC is known for being lights out after the All Star break ask the Brewers and Burnett isnt so bad himself look throughout his career. Joba is finally pitching Longer and with his velocity despite idiots aying he lost it. No you cant throw 100 mph for 7 innings. Pettite is a work horse and Mitre is called up to take the fifth spot
Bullpen- Hughes and Aceves have been great outta the pen and will continue to be used as set up. Coke is serviceable for a lefty and the rest is awful/
Offense- A+
Pitching- A-
Bullpen- C+ (only cuz of Mo)
Prediction Win AL Beast with a strong second half
Red Sox
Offensively Youk, Ellsbury, Bay, and Pedroia are carry them. Aside from them they are old and injury prone wouldnt be surprised if they shake it up before the deadline
Starting Pitching is there good and extremely deep. Beckett and Lester lead the way Buchholtz is back in the Bigs. Wakefield has the knuckler and Penny and Smoltz. Dice K is on the DL too
Bullpen-there Bullpen might be the best in the bigs maybe behind the Dodgers. Bard, Delcarmen, Ramirez, Papelbon all have ERAs under 2.5, get strikeouts and throw gas. Okajima get out lefties and Masterson is a decent long reliever
Offense- B-
Starters- A-
Bullpen A+
Prediction- they win the wild card barely over the Rays
Rays
Offensively they hang with the best. Zobrist is playing over his head and will come down but Upton will get hot to pick up. Bartlett is a career .285 hitter and he will drop off offensively but provides a solid glove to make up for it. Longoria ,Crawford, and Pena are there studs and need to carry them
Starting Pitching is there strength good and young. Garza, Shields, and Nieman have ERAs under four. Kazmir has too much talent to struggle all year and Price is going through growing pains which all young pitchers do (except Lincecum)
Bullpen is mediocre. Howell is great and Cormier has been a surprise but aside from them they are woeful. Sure Randy Choate has a good ERA and has been pitching well but he only has thrown 14 innings. Wheeler is above average but Nelson, Balfour, and Bradford are not impressive
Offense- A-
Starters- A+
Bullpen- C
prediction unless they add a Matt Capps or another good reliever I think alot of quality starts get wasted with blown saves. They keep it close but are the odd team out
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There's absolutely no way in hell that the Yankees pen is better than Tampa's. It's just flat out wrong. "Woeful"? Come on, hearing that about a top 5 bullpen in baseball is false, but hearing it from a Yankee fan on top of that just makes it ridiculous.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fangraphs.com/teams.aspx?pos=all&stats=rel&lg=all&type=1&season=2009&month=0
Not even cherry-picking statistics, I'll just list the major ones. The only thing the Yanks rank higher in is strikeouts, and the majority of those are attributed to Mo.
Rays ERA: 4th
Yankees ERA: 26th
Rays FIP: 5th
Yankees FIP: 29th
Rays HR/9: .8
Yankees HR/9: 1.5
To address your other points about the pen - Randy Choate is a LOOGY and LOOGYs are often the lowest IP out of the pen. He can't be penalized or discredited for only facing situational lefties. Additionally, he was a callup in June to replace Brian Shouse, another lights-out LOOGY who was injured back at the end of May.
Balfour has also pitched very well aside from May. His K rate is still one of the best in baseball. Really the only guys in the pen who are bad are Nelson and Wheeler, who has gotten extremely lucky.
Bradford has been up for literally 2 weeks and his BABIP is a ridiculous .571 so he's obviously just not getting the breaks.
In case anyone doesn't know BABIP, it's what generally determines "luck" in ground balls. Over the course of the season, nearly every pitcher's BABIP (batting average on balls in play) averages out to .300. If it's higher, it means his groundballs are finding holes. Since Bradford is a ground ball pitcher, hits are barely finding holes at a rate that is completely unsustainable. This is the opposite of what happened with Andy Sonnanstine last year when his BABIP was like .200 all year, and all of his pitches got hit hard right at the defense. He was an outlier on the lower end of the spectrum.
And I never said that the bullpen or closers aren't the most important thing down the stretch, I never said anything like that. Closers by the definition of "a guy who only pitches the 9th" is what I said is not essential, and almost every progressive manager in the game is agreeing.
If you have your best pitcher, you use him in whatever the highest leverage situation is. If Mariano Rivera is warmed up and it's a one run game in the 8th inning with the bases loaded, it would be most beneficial to bring him in at that point.
You always want your best pitcher in the ballgame when it calls for it most, and that is what Joe Maddon has done with JP Howell. He's a "closer" by situation only. If he's available in the 9th, he's in the game, but if the 1-2-3 hitters are on base with 2 outs in the 8th, he'll be in at that situation and the #2 bullpen guy will be out there in the 9th.
It's not like I have a problem with you saying my team isn't going to win, I just take particular offense to people thinking the bullpen is bad. I checked last week and the pen was at the exact same ranking as the pen of 2008, when it was pretty widely regarded as one of the best in baseball, and what a lot of people claimed was the reason that we made it to the postseason, along with the improved defense. It's just that a lot of people see that there is 1) No closer, 2) A few blown saves by Percival and 3) A revolving door of injuries and think that the pen is bad.
The only reason the ERA is so low is cuz Choate and Bradford have a combined 20 innings and 1 run. Balfour gets hit hard and still ahs an ERA around 4.5. Despite what you might think or so fan graph site says the Bullpen is skewed with Bradford and Choat and you know Choate is a left specialist and Bradfords ERA will be to four once he pitches more than 6 innings.
ReplyDeleteLast year you had guys in the pen playing over there head and it wsa exposed in the playoffs
Want stats
Rays
Balfour: his walks are up Ks are down from last year 4.71 ERA 42 innings 42 Ks 22BB 1.38 Whip
Howell: 44.2 IP 16 BB 53 K 2.01 ERA 1.07 WHIP
Cormier: 48.0 IP 12BB 26K 2.81ERA 1.13 Whip
Wheeler: 34.2IP 7BB 23K 3.38ERA 0.95 Whip
Choate: 15.0IP 5BB 15K 1.80ERA 1.00 WHIP
Bradford: 4.1 IP 0BB 3K 2.08ERA 2.77 WHIP
Nelson: 35.0IP 21BB 32K 4.37ERA 1.49 WHIP
those are you ben as of right now Bradford is getting hit but catching breaks Choate only pitches to lefties. So Howell, Cormier and Wheeler are your guys
Yanks
Rivera:39.0IP 3BB 44K 2.31ERA 0.87 WHIP
Coke: 38.1IP 14BB 31K 3.99ERA 1.04 WHIP
Hughes: 55.0IP 20BB 56K 3.76ERA 1.22 Whip
but since coming to the pen check these #s
18.7 IP .97 ERA 25 Ks 5BB .75 Whip
Robertson: 22.2IP 16BB 34K 3.57ERA 1.41 WHIP
Bruney: 16.2IP 10BB 18K 4.86ERA 1.32 WHIP
Tomko: 20.2IP 7BB 11K 5.23ERA 1.26 WHIP
Aceves: 44.1IP 8BB 38K 2.64ERA 0.97 WHIP
Hughes has been lights out in the Pen and isnt going nowhere because Mitre is the fifth starter
Hughes Aceves and Mo are are big three and Mo hands down is better than any pitcher the Rays have. These numbers are really similar to have they rays 4th and Yanks being 26th. With Bradford being a groung ball pitcher he pitches to contact look at Lowe and Wang it happens and balls fall and find holes. I do not think the rays are a top five bullpen. Plus Marte is being activated and Tomk goes buy buy
First off Marte is terrible and always has been so that probably won't help. Tomko and him are probably the same pitcher unless he made a miraculous turnaround. That trade with Pitt was just bad for everybody.
ReplyDeleteSecond you can't just discount Choate's stats in the overall picture. If you really want to exclude him, then take out Bruney as well. Or, just add in Shouse's numbers since they've assumed the same roles and they're pretty much the exact same pitcher.
Third, Bradford's ERA won't be 4. Bradford's ERA has been 4 or higher exactly once in his entire life. His ERA like I explained with BABIP should actually be LOWER since he's doing his job and getting groundballs, they're just finding holes at a completely ridiculous rate that has never been sustained that high in the history of baseball. As a side note about Bradford - he has a TON of inherited runners scored. So his ERA is pretty low but if you factored in the inherited runners it'd be close to 5.
And yes, the numbers are similar, but they're still better for Tampa. Add in Shouse to even out the amount of innings pitched and they're still better for Tampa. And when it comes down to it, thats what the point was: that the Rays bullpen is better. Is it enough to singlehandedly bring a team to the World Series? No, but no bullpen ever is. Is it enough to sustain leads and not collapse down the stretch? Yes, I think I've shown pretty adequately that they rank close to the top in baseball in nearly every bullpen stat so yeah they're probably not going to collapse.
And really the pen wasn't "exposed" in the playoff. They had one terrible game in game 5 of the ALCS where they had an epic collapse. In every game prior to that they were lights out. In the rest of the ALCS they were lights out. In the World Series, the entire team shit the bed, so I don't think anyone can say that they were "exposed" anymore than the rest of the team was since they all fucking sucked.
ok First to say Marte has always been terrible is fictious his career ERA is 3.4 and was one of the most dominant left handed relievers in the game a few years back. and Bradfords career ERA is the just about the same. So they wash
ReplyDeleteMo is better than your best reliever Howell even though Howell is great. And they Pirates trade wasnt a bust Marte struggled last year but Nady play good in his 59 games 12HRs and 40 RBIs not too bad.
I only brought up Choates innings pitched because they are few and as the season goes on it will go up you know this, that is how baseball works. And Bradford pitches to contact thats the risk you run sure he gets ground balls but trust me they are not all slow rollers and seeing eyes. Derek Lowe struggled as a closer pitching the sameway except not throwing like a softball player.
Hughes is there new set up man and has been dominant add in Mo game over. Howell has blown five saves Mo one. Aceves is pitching great and Marte will be used as a lefty specialist which should benefit him. I give they Yanks the edge because if it comes down to it ill take Hughes and Mo over Wheeler and Howell any day of the week. The Yanks are a game out of first place and just ran through he division leading tigers. But to say the Rays bullpen is that much better is ridiculous. Just check the stats
What the fuck ever, I'm not going to keep putting statistics up there and have you just ignore them and tell me why you objectively think I'm wrong. I don't care. It doesn't even matter, the teams will speak for themselves.
ReplyDeleteyour throwing up useless stats like ground ball rate,fly ball rate etc. HR/9 is important but who cares about groundball flyball who gives a shit an out is an out. A ground ball ripped down the line it is a double and a flyball in the alley is a double. I put up the real stats ERA, WHIP, Ks, BB, BS, S cuz they are the categories that matter.
ReplyDeleteAnd you said so yourself the #s are real close. three of the Yanks relievers were starters (Tomko, Aceves, Hughes) but since being moved to the pen they have been great except Tomko but hes on his way out. I posted all stats and all truths. Marte is terrible and always has been. That is a statement from you Bullshit statement made from one bad year. Truly a homer statement check his stats. I havent ignored any stats Bradford does get ground balls, Choate and Shouse pitch to lefties. Balfour has been pitching better but hes worse than last year. Stats prove it
Here are more stats for you Yanks 8 blown saves rays 12. You put up stats favoring the rays sure you the rays era is better but the Yanks just found a seventh and eighth inning setup man while the rays have a carousel. So if you give the rays an "A" the Yanks are "A-"
But your right let the teams decide the Yanks are tied for first while the Rays are almost 5 games back.
my b about Marte I confused Damaso with Ronny
ReplyDeletelol on another note join the Fantasy Football league lets say ten buck to enter first second and third win money
ReplyDelete