Nationals Baseball: Stop being unlucky!

Monday, September 20, 2010

Stop being unlucky!

It's bad enough that the Nats are bad, but do they have to be unlucky, too? They've lost their last 4 one-run games and more "impressively" 10 of their last 11. That kind of luck turns a team looking at getting a few games past 70 wins to a team hoping to break 65.

As for yesterday's game, I wasn't following it and when I first glanced at the last inning I was about to harangue Riggleman for trying to give Storen experience in a game with playoff implications. Then I looked at the entire game and realized there wasn't really any choice in the matter. He'd used his best three relievers and a lefty specialist already. The starting pitching failures by Marquis and Zimmerman wiped out the bullpen depth. Storen had been hit hard, but the hard hit balls were from lefty batters. Really Storen was the only choice. It's a shame for the Braves that the Nats starters sucked so bad in the previous two games that he couldn't quickly yank Storen when it seems like he obviously didn't have it, but them's the breaks when you are relying on the Nats.

4 comments:

Sec314 said...

The problem is that Riggleman wore out Storen earlier this year.

How many innings has this young guy pitched in comparison to 2009?

Maybe Storen can focus his physics studies on arm strength.

Hoo said...

Shouldn't you remove games won in the bottom 9th from your sample? If yesterday's 9th was the 8th inning, chances are Phils are up by more than 1 run. And barring a dinger, any win in the bottom of the 9th will be 1 run so you have some truncated data right?


BTW..Poor Roger Bernadina. In his time to shine, he's fallen off a cliff with a sub 400 OPS in September. Can Morse play CF?

Harper said...

Sec314 - almost 80 last year (37 in the minors). On pace for around 70 this year. He hasn't been pushed that hard - but not babied either. He had been perfect (ERA) in September before now.

Hoo - Why? We're working under the assumption that one-run games are luck based and I'd consider happening to get runs in the 9th (as opposed to the 8th) as somewhat a product of luck.

Hoo said...

Harper: Winning in the bottom of the 9th means you're leaving outs on the table. My guess is that if the Phils got all their licks it could have been a 2+ run win instead of a 1 run win.

I'd theorize that teams with an unsettled closer in the 9th loses more one run games when they're the visitor than luck would factor. But maybe this is built in already.