Category: Statistics

DeRosa, Soriano favor us with corresponding run scoring streaks (twice)

 

Mark DeRosa and Alfonso Soriano had corresponding run-scoring streaks last week, both starting on the same day.  On games,between August 21 and August 26, both scored at least one run in each game.  DeRosa went on to extend his streak one more game. 

Both Soriano and DeRosa have had longer streaks earlier in the season.  Soriano had a 7-game streak in May.  DeRosa, however, has the longest run-scoring game streak on the team when he went 10 games crossing the plate pretty much at the same time. 

Here are the top five run scoring streaks by Cubs in 2008:

                   StreakStart  Streak End Games    
+-----------------+-----------+-----------+-----+--- 
 Mark DeRosa        2008-05-09  2008-05-19    10 
 Derrek Lee         2008-05-18  2008-05-26     8 
 Mark DeRosa        2008-08-21  2008-08-27     7                                          
 Alfonso Soriano    2008-05-10  2008-05-17     7 
 Alfonso Soriano    2008-08-21  2008-08-26     6                                          
Success breeds success, I guess.  
(thanks B-R Play Index!)

Top hitting pitchers

As of 8/27/08, here are the majors’ top hitting pitchers (min 25 PA):

Carlos Zambrano, Chi   .365

Brandon Backe, Hou   . 302

Micah Owings, Ari   .288

Braden Looper, Stl   .275

Adam Wainwright, Stl   .267

You can see the full list I saved over at Baseball Reference’s Play Index.

Not only is Zambrano at the top of the list of hitting but his 14 rbis dwarfs second place Brandon Webb’s 7 (which ironically he got with a .138 BA and no HR). 

Zambrano needs a little lovin’ after his rough August. 

Go Cubs!

Which MLB teams do better on the road?

 

Right now, I’m fixated on how major league teams do on the road.  Mostly, I’m sure, because for the first half, the Cubs were having a hard time doing that.  I will give them credit though.  They’ve managed to play themselves up to four under .500 which ain’t great but is a helluva lot better than they were (thanks, Brew Crew!).

Right now, there are five teams who have a better record as visitors than they do in front of their friendly crowds at home.   The Angels actually have the best record in all of MLB as visitors with a pretty dang amazing .664 winning percentage.    

   

Away

Home

  

W

L

W

L

  

Diff
San Francisco Giants
26
30
0.464
20
34
0.370
  
0.094
Philadelphia Phillies
31
26
0.544
29
34
0.460
  
0.084
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
38
21
0.644
31
21
0.596
  
0.048
St Louis Cardinals
31
25
0.554
31
26
0.544
  
0.010
Kansas City Royals
26
30
0.464
26
30
0.464
  
0.000

 

But it’s the San Fran Giants who have the largest difference between the two.  Though their visitor record of .464 is really nothing to write home about, it’s a whole lot better than their home record of 20-34 (.370), a .094 difference best in the majors. 

Patterson at the bottom

Andy from Stat of the Day is probably stating the obvious but claims that Corey Patterson is an “awful” player at least when it comes to offense.  Among players with 200+ at-bats, He ranks last in batting average (.183 to second place Eric Byrnes’ .209) and ranks last in OBP (a paltry .216 to Kenji Johjima’s .252, a .32 difference).

The Cubs traded him in January ’06 after a miserable 2005 campaign not much better than this year’s (.215/.254/.348).  In the two years in Baltimore, Patterson picked it up slightly, hitting .276 and .269 and even managing to steal a combined 83 bases.  Of course, knowing us Cub fans, we wondered if it was a management issue then.

Looks like Corey is back to his old ways again.

Home Sweet Home for Twinkie Hurlers

I was chatting with my friend Joy the Sox fan over lunch today and she passed on an interesting tidbit about the Twins (a team, by the way, she despises). 

Minnesota is currently a half game out of first place with a 59-47.   Yet, their pitching staff show a wide gap in their performance on the road and at home.  Their ERA at home is third in the majors at a nifty 3.19.  When they travel, however, it slides all the way down to 28th in the MLB at a miserable 5.52 ERA. 

You can see the splits here.

That results in a 36-19 home, 23-28 away record for the year.

U of I prof Alan Nathan talks physics with MLB.com

University of Illinois Physics professor Alan Nathan was interviewed by MLB.com’s Cory Schwartz on the topic of the Pitch F/X tool.  We interviewed Nathan for Baseball Zealot Radio last year and I’m happily surprised to say that some of stuff sunk in and I recognize some of his talking points. 

You can see Schwartz’ interview with Alan Nathan at MLB.com’s web site.  

Key to Tampa’s success?

Interesting piece of trivia.  Every game so far in 2008 by the Tampa Bay Rays has been started by a pitcher who is 26 years old or younger.  Andy from Baseball Reference’s Stat of the Day did the math for the whole league.  

Pittsburgh is up there with 72.  On the other side of the coin, Seattle has just 16 such games.