Bill James, the much-reviled-by-traditionalists baseball writer and "sabermetrician" (aka nerd to all of you who hate logic and reason), once wrote "One-run games involve a huge amount of luck. This may be the only safe statement that can be made about them." And although I don't really believe in luck, I am willing to believe in the randomness of one-run games, and therefore it is safe to say the Phillies have been one of baseball's randomest teams this year. They currently have the worst record in baseball in one-run games - 6 wins, 19 losses. That is pretty atrocious and has absolutely killed them this year.
I went back and looked at their 19 one-run losses and didn't really notice a theme. 11 of them were lost in the 8th inning or later, which means they may have been lost due to the awfulness of the bullpen; but a lot of those games were 3-2 and 4-3, which means the offense should probably bear the blame for the L.
Interestingly, they've lost several of these close games to the Arizona Diamondbacks, who are on the flip-side of the same coin. The D-Bags (whoops, Backs) have gone 25-15 in one run games this year, which has largely helped them achieve their 1st-place worthy 63-50 record despite the fact that they've given up 29 more runs this year than they've scored. Their pitching staff, even without the aged giant rat-man Randy Johnson, has been very good. Bead spokesperson Brandon Webb (pictured above for some reason) has filthy stuff, and they have a great bullpen. But they have a terrible, terrible offense- and they play in a hitters' park. Their lineup is Eric Byrnes and a bunch of guys who I'm surprised made it past T-Ball. Actually, most of them aren't far removed from t-ball- they have one of the youngest regular lineups in baseball. But that doesn't mean they have to suck at hitting the baseball.
What is the point of this article? Actually, there isn't one. I just want to suplex every media person who thinks the Diamondbacks are good and wanted a segue into writing about them; that's all. I can't wait to see them collapse in September. However, I can wait to eat some undelicious crow when they're in the playoffs in October after finishing one game ahead of the Phils in the Wild Card race.
2 comments:
nice blog. this will become one of my daily reads. keep up the good work. your site will be linked on ours shortly.
Arizona's Pythagorean record is now five games below their actual record. There is no way they can keep this up.
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