well, baseball has been crazy as ever. mostly good for the tribe. despite a less than impressive 4-6 road trip. half of those wins belong to the hottest pitcher in baseball, fausto carmona. just ask torri hunter. we are back home, and just got done beating up on the twins for three games. fausto capped things off today with his first complete game shut out, a 4 hit gem. in doing so, he beat the best pitcher in baseball in johan santana, for the second time this month. i wish i could have listened to today's game. it was scoreless going into the seventh. victor martinez and ryan garko than hit back to back jacks. btw, it was the first time johan allowed back to backs in over 3 years. fourth time overall. that was all the tribe got, that was all they needed. game over man. in comes cincy, a below .500 team. those are always the scary match ups.

well, the season is over one quarter through now, so i thought i would look at some stats. i admit, i am a stat geek.

you always hear how important it is for pitchers to get ahead in the count. the numbers SCREAM this adage. here are some batting averages. the low number for each player is always their average with a 0-1 count. the higher average is when the count is 1-0.
kelly shoppach .188 / .412
ryan garko .260 / .376
jason michaels .161 / .353
jhonny peralta .182 / .345
trot .184 / .340
grady .219 / .321
pronk .230 / .314

some home and away batting averages that stuck out.:

casey blake, like alot of tribe batsmen, is hitting poorly at the jake at .222.
pronk is worse at .173.
jhonny loves it at home, as indicated by his .322 average. he loves the jake so much, he only hits .197 when not there.
josh barfield misses the jake so much, he only hits .157 when not there.

i was shocked to see turf versus grass batting averages.:

the non speedy travis hafner is hitting .500 at turf field stadiums and only .231 on grass. david delluci is a .375 hitter on turf.
although barfield has been struggling in general, he does not utilize his speed on turf at all, batting only.143.
jason michaels on turf, .056.

day vs night batting averages also had some seeming anomalies, and some amazing consistency.:

trot must see better during the day. he crushes at a .409 clip during the day, and must be blinded at night where he is an .200 'hitter'.
double 'd' and mike rouse should not play day games, batting .200 and .077 respectively. it is a good thing that trot and david platoon in the outfield.
then there is barfield and kelly shoppach. between the two of them, there is a .004 point differential. josh is .220 day / .221 night. kelly is .273 day / .276 night.

averages versus lefties and righties.:

most hitters are doing fair to well against lefties. josh (.161) and shoppach (.111) are not. casey blake loves the lefties (.333). not as much as jhonny (.370).
kelly shoppach was one of the better hitters against righties at .323.
everyone knows left handed batters should struggle against left handed pitchers. pronk bucked that trend last year, and is continuing to do so this year (.289 / .259. the really surprising thing is jason michaels is trying to follow suit. he his batting .278 against his usual nemesi.

lastly, and most importantly, the RISP of the 12 regulars. sorry (andy marte).:

.459 - victor (unbelievable); .417 - jhonny ; .313 - jason ; .303 - trot ; .276 - grady ; .268 - barfield (one of his better categories) ; .267 - kelly ; here is the sad part, both pronk and garko are tied at .200 ; .160 - dd ; .146 - blake (he IS doing much better now) ; .125 - mike.

it was sorta disappointing to see grady is only hitting .235 from the seventh inning on.

some final thoughts:

what is wrong with fernando?

what is up with teams scoring five or more runs in the ninth inning to win the game? the indians have lost two games like that now, both on the road. thanks joe blow. it happened a record five times this week! in 1979 and 2003, it only happened 6 times all year! makes me feel a little better.

i bet jason davis does well with seattle. i hope he does.

what happens when newly signed jake westbrook comes back? i say go with a six man rotation. but since i am not eric wedge, jeremy sowers best start pitching well.

cliff lee should be due for a great pitched game. so far (in just three games) that has been his pattern.

i never thought i would want casey blake to be the starting third baseman again. but he has done awesome, both offensively and defensively, at third. plus, that means garko gets more AB's. sorry andy.

with all the comments made by bewildered twin players that were in espn's recap of today's tribe game, why was fausto not featured in that's nasty portion of baseball tonight??? scott kazmir throws over 100 pitches in just 4 innings, and they show him striking out a washed up and over the hill sammy sosa on low 90 mph fastballs.

is fred lewis for real?

lincecum seems to be.

it is late.

go tribe!

peace