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Mets Weekend Roundup: Hot in Cleveland! (Mets Games 9, 10, 11) April 18, 2016

Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.
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On Friday, Bartolo Colon started against his old Cleveland Indians team. Colon snagged the win on 5.1 innings pitched with 8 hits, 2 runs (both earned), 1 walk and 5 strikeouts for a game score of 48. This is Colon’s first win of the season and his first cheap win since May of last year. Bart has had exactly one cheap win each season as a Met.

On Saturday, Matt Harvey took his third loss of the season in a non-quality start. Harvey has raised concerns over the past several starts; though the Mets scored 5 runs in the game, Harvey’s run support has been 3.33 runs per game this year. Last year, the Mets averaged 4.37 runs per game behind Harvey; that’s the difference between above- and below-league-average support. On the bright side, that means the trend is unlikely to persist. Meanwhile, Corey Kluber – the Indians’ ace – is also 0-3 on a 6.16 ERA. Kluber took a tough loss to the Rays on April 12th but has otherwise pitched pretty poorly. He averages one run of support per game, with high hit totals and lots of extra-base hits.

On Sunday, Steven Matz bounced back from a difficult first start and grabbed a brilliant 78 game score in 7 innings of 3-hit baseball. Matz walked 2 and struck out 9.

As DH in Cleveland, Yoenis Cespedes hit a monstrous .417/.462/1.083; this included a .600 batting average on balls in play, indicating that he got lucky on a few of those hits. Meanwhile, honorary Met Juan Uribe had a .444/.545/.546 weekend against the Mets, starting all three games at third base.

The Mets bullpen allowed 5 earned runs in 8 innings for a 5.63 ERA, but inherited six runners with none scoring. Hansel Robles, Antonio Bastardo, and Jim Henderson all looked like strong options coming out of thrower jail, with Jeurys Familia notching an ugly but effective one-out save to bail out Addison Reed on Friday.

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The Best Game Ever July 30, 2010

Posted by tomflesher in Baseball.
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Two of my favorite things about baseball happened during tonight’s game between the Yankees and the Indians.

First of all, in the top of the ninth inning, corner infielder Andy Marte pitched for the Indians. Marte pitched a perfect ninth and coincidentally struck out Nick Swisher, who was brought in to pitch for the Yankees in a similar situation last year and struck out Gabe Kapler of the Tampa Bay Rays. I can’t promise it’s true, but I think that puts Swisher at the top of the list for involvement in position player pitcher strikeouts.

Marte’s presence was necessary because the Indians used seven other pitchers. Starter Mitch Talbot went only two innings, and the Indians got another two out of Rafael Perez. Frank Hermann took the loss for the Indians during his 1 1/3 innings. Tony Sipp pitched another 1 1/3, and Joe Smith managed to give up four earned runs in 1/3 of an inning before being removed for Jess Todd for an inning. In the bottom of the 9th, Marte was all the Indians had left.

Not to be outdone, Joe Girardi gave up his designated hitter by moving his DH – funnily enough, it was Swisher – into right field as part of a triple switch. Swisher moved to right field; Colin Curtis moved from right field to left field; Marcus Thames moved from left field to third base;  finally, pitcher Chan Ho Park was put into the batting order in place of Alex Rodriguez, who came out of the game.

Finally, A-Rod is up to 33 plate appearances without a home run. Assuming his standard rate of .064 home runs per plate appearance, the likelihood of this happening by chance is .936^{33} = .113 \approx 11.3 \% . I stand by my belief that there’s something other than chance (i.e. distraction or other mental factors) causing Rodriguez’s hitting to suffer.