Sunday, June 7, 2009

Pitching Duels?

Well, at least the Twins didn't get swept...for what that's worth. And they are still struggling to score runs on the road.

Recap:
Friday: Twins 2 - Mariners 1
Saturday: Twins 1 - Mariners 2
Sunday: Twins 2 - Mariners 4
Twins drop series

Looking at these scores, it would appear that this series had some nice pitching duels. Any time the game is low-scoring, that's the term that the announcers use. And I guess it's true, because all pitchers involved did a nice job making pitches when they had to and keeping their teams in the game. But the games were also fraught with wasted opportunities. Both sides were guilty, but the Twins were far more so.

Let's look a the team LOBs (runners left on base):
Friday: Twins 10 - Mariners 6
Saturday: Twins 9 - Mariners 6
Sunday: Twins 12 - Mariners 13

And the team RISPs (hitting with runners in scoring position):
Friday: Twins 1 for 9 - Mariners 0 for 4
Saturday: Twins 1 for 7 - Mariners 0 for 4
Sunday: Twins 0 for 8 - Mariners 0 for 9

I've never claimed to be very "stat-y." But these numbers tell me what I intuited while I was watching the games: pretty much that the Twins should've scored more runs than they did. But on the flip side of the same coin, Liriano and Blackburn pitched very well (and even though Slowey struggled, he wasn't devastatingly awful). Too bad the Twins hitters made the Mariners pitchers seem like they pitched very well too.

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Now, the boys are off to Oakland for a four-game (my favorite - not) series. I'm not a fan of weekday west-coast series, because I'm an (almost) old woman and I need my sleep. But not watching is not an option because I lay awake wondering. I'm a fool and I know it. Note to co-workers: if I have dark circles under my eyes and seem to be crabbier than usual this week, it's only the late Twins games.

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And what is up all the four-game series? Do the Twins usually have this many? I don't think so.

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Speaking of Oakland, what's the over/under on the number of times Bert mentions the vast amount of foul territory in the Coliseum during the three games FSN will be broadcasting? I'll say over 11.5 times.

2 comments:

Katie said...

Here I am with the super early comment again only because I was going to work on my post and saw your new post on my dash board!

For awhile there our starters were struggling but we had the run support to make up for it, now we have improved the starters and we're lacking in run support. It would be nice if we could get them to click together.

It's nice to see the bottom of the line up doing something again as well.

I hear you on the west coast games. I make myself stay awake and watch them, because I know I won't sleep cause I have to know how we did. Like this past Friday night...it killed me to turn it off after the 9th, but I knew I had to since I had to be bubbly and awake for Saturday.

It may be a long week at work with a lot of coffee!

Jim H. said...

Daughter is visiting friends in the Bay area this week. One of them works for the A's so they got some nice tickets for tonight's game (maybe tomorrow, too.)

Did you know that foul territory at the Oakland ballpark is huge? It is!

As Bert might say, it's one of the largest foul territories at the major league level.