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Plenty of fodder in here, I think.
QUOTE
Padres/Cardinals
Thursday's action in St. Louis, in a nutshell:
Padres: 10 hits, two walks, three HBPs
Two runs.
Cardinals: six hits, five walks, one ROE
Six runs.
There's your season, folks. The Padres couldn't have blown more opportunities if they'd been given two kegs of Rohypnol and a guest spot on "Taradise." Here's the middle seven innings of the game:
Second: Bases loaded, one out, a dinged Mark Mulder goes 2-0 on Ben Johnson. Swinging strike, swinging strike, swinging strike, and then a Pedro Astacio groundball.
Third: Nothing of note.
Fourth: Single, no-out double play. Five-pitch inning.
Fifth: One-out single, double play.
Sixth: One-out single, double play
Seventh: Three straight hits to start the inning and cut the lead to 4-1…and then Miguel Olivo grounds into a double play, the team's fourth in four innings.
Eighth: Bases loaded, two outs, and Mark Sweeney has to bat against a lefty. Five-pitch strikeout.
This is why performance analysis breaks down when used to predict short series or individual games. Over time, the sacred "little things" wash out, leaving the big things as the best measure of quality. In a game, though, you have to cash in your baserunners. Not doing so doesn't say anything about your human qualities--character, clutch, claptrap like that--but it does mean you're playing poor baseball. At what point does a team that's hitting into double plays every inning take a different approach to the plate, maybe wait a bit for Mulder to get pitches up in the zone, give them a chance to drive the ball? The Padres just kept going after the fastball down, and making two, two, two outs in one.
Tactically, there wasn't much to talk about, although I do think Bochy's decision to send up Olivo in the seventh for Johnson was a questionable call. Olivo has hit very well as a Padre and against soutpaws, and Johnson hasn't done either. However, Bochy didn't have a surfeit of right-handed bats on the bench, and using one of them to hit for a position player in a situation that wasn't game-critical may have been overmanaging. In an inning where the Padres had begun driving the ball, Olivo pulled the plug with a double-play grounder, then wasn't available an inning later when Bochy needed his righty bat. The former isn't something you can blame Bochy for, but the latter may be. The difference between Johnson and Olivo against Mulder in the seventh is certainly less than the difference between Olivo and Sweeney against Randy Flores in the eighth.
It's possible that having a Weaveresque platoon of John Lowenstein and Gary Roenicke on the bench wouldn't have saved the Padres, because the Cardinals played a terrific game of baseball. As I say, the "little things" are overrated by a factor of 100, but you look at the Cards' win yesterday and you see four double plays turned, a successful squeeze play, a pretty hit-and-run executed by the game's best hitter, two key strikeouts with the bases loaded…they were just the better team. I'm no fan of Mark Mulder, but his core skill is getting those DPs, and he did that yesterday.
Just because the little things are overrated doesn't mean being good at them is worthless. It just means that you have to be good at the big things as well. The Cardinals are good at both.
[/b][/quote]
Thursday's action in St. Louis, in a nutshell:
Padres: 10 hits, two walks, three HBPs
Two runs.
Cardinals: six hits, five walks, one ROE
Six runs.
There's your season, folks. The Padres couldn't have blown more opportunities if they'd been given two kegs of Rohypnol and a guest spot on "Taradise." Here's the middle seven innings of the game:
Second: Bases loaded, one out, a dinged Mark Mulder goes 2-0 on Ben Johnson. Swinging strike, swinging strike, swinging strike, and then a Pedro Astacio groundball.
Third: Nothing of note.
Fourth: Single, no-out double play. Five-pitch inning.
Fifth: One-out single, double play.
Sixth: One-out single, double play
Seventh: Three straight hits to start the inning and cut the lead to 4-1…and then Miguel Olivo grounds into a double play, the team's fourth in four innings.
Eighth: Bases loaded, two outs, and Mark Sweeney has to bat against a lefty. Five-pitch strikeout.
This is why performance analysis breaks down when used to predict short series or individual games. Over time, the sacred "little things" wash out, leaving the big things as the best measure of quality. In a game, though, you have to cash in your baserunners. Not doing so doesn't say anything about your human qualities--character, clutch, claptrap like that--but it does mean you're playing poor baseball. At what point does a team that's hitting into double plays every inning take a different approach to the plate, maybe wait a bit for Mulder to get pitches up in the zone, give them a chance to drive the ball? The Padres just kept going after the fastball down, and making two, two, two outs in one.
Tactically, there wasn't much to talk about, although I do think Bochy's decision to send up Olivo in the seventh for Johnson was a questionable call. Olivo has hit very well as a Padre and against soutpaws, and Johnson hasn't done either. However, Bochy didn't have a surfeit of right-handed bats on the bench, and using one of them to hit for a position player in a situation that wasn't game-critical may have been overmanaging. In an inning where the Padres had begun driving the ball, Olivo pulled the plug with a double-play grounder, then wasn't available an inning later when Bochy needed his righty bat. The former isn't something you can blame Bochy for, but the latter may be. The difference between Johnson and Olivo against Mulder in the seventh is certainly less than the difference between Olivo and Sweeney against Randy Flores in the eighth.
It's possible that having a Weaveresque platoon of John Lowenstein and Gary Roenicke on the bench wouldn't have saved the Padres, because the Cardinals played a terrific game of baseball. As I say, the "little things" are overrated by a factor of 100, but you look at the Cards' win yesterday and you see four double plays turned, a successful squeeze play, a pretty hit-and-run executed by the game's best hitter, two key strikeouts with the bases loaded…they were just the better team. I'm no fan of Mark Mulder, but his core skill is getting those DPs, and he did that yesterday.
Just because the little things are overrated doesn't mean being good at them is worthless. It just means that you have to be good at the big things as well. The Cardinals are good at both.
[/b][/quote]
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