Wednesday, August 31, 2005
ADVENTURES OF THE SEMI-OPTIMAL
I know I should be giving some analysis about last night's game and everything, but I just don't have the heart. Obviously K-Rod's in a slump, but the most fundamental problem is that our starting pitcher went nine and one-third strong innings and couldn't get the win. The Angels had essentially no one on base all night, scoring the one run because of a solo home run, not because of any kind of rally.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you basically rely on one hitter for your offense, and he goes into a slump. And I just don't see how batting him in front of Bengie is necessarily gonna help, either.
Had the Angels moved Erstad to center in place of Finley, I'd have said the division was ours to lose. If we had kept Finley in center, I'd have said we'd already lost the division. The choice to keep The Legs in center while platooning Kotch and Rivera at DH is better than nothing, but worse than everything. Apparently a realization was made that Erstad couldn't take the move to center, either due to his arm or to his legs or to being haunted by the Ghost of Gary Pettis, I don't know.
Or maybe the decision was more along the lines of Juan Rivera -- who has hit right-handed batters better than lefties over his career -- shouldn't be an everyday player (either at DH or LF), or perhaps that determination was made about Casey Kotchman. I'm not sure how Quinlan is necessarily better suited to start every day than those guys (and maybe Ztu will take a bunch of AB there), but who knows.
The other elephant in the room is that Rivera is much more qualified to play left field defensively (an .884 zone rating with two assists in 178 innings, plus two more assists in 183 innings in right) than Garret Anderson (.870 and four assists in 783 innings). But whatever.
Whatever we do in the next month, we won't be playing with our best arrangement, but it will sure be a hell of a lot better than what we've had out there so far.
I know I should be giving some analysis about last night's game and everything, but I just don't have the heart. Obviously K-Rod's in a slump, but the most fundamental problem is that our starting pitcher went nine and one-third strong innings and couldn't get the win. The Angels had essentially no one on base all night, scoring the one run because of a solo home run, not because of any kind of rally.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you basically rely on one hitter for your offense, and he goes into a slump. And I just don't see how batting him in front of Bengie is necessarily gonna help, either.
Had the Angels moved Erstad to center in place of Finley, I'd have said the division was ours to lose. If we had kept Finley in center, I'd have said we'd already lost the division. The choice to keep The Legs in center while platooning Kotch and Rivera at DH is better than nothing, but worse than everything. Apparently a realization was made that Erstad couldn't take the move to center, either due to his arm or to his legs or to being haunted by the Ghost of Gary Pettis, I don't know.
Or maybe the decision was more along the lines of Juan Rivera -- who has hit right-handed batters better than lefties over his career -- shouldn't be an everyday player (either at DH or LF), or perhaps that determination was made about Casey Kotchman. I'm not sure how Quinlan is necessarily better suited to start every day than those guys (and maybe Ztu will take a bunch of AB there), but who knows.
The other elephant in the room is that Rivera is much more qualified to play left field defensively (an .884 zone rating with two assists in 178 innings, plus two more assists in 183 innings in right) than Garret Anderson (.870 and four assists in 783 innings). But whatever.
Whatever we do in the next month, we won't be playing with our best arrangement, but it will sure be a hell of a lot better than what we've had out there so far.
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