Saturday, August 20, 2005

Angels 4; Red Sox 2

Typical scratching out of enough runs to win, so I'm not going to talk about the offense. No, what I'm going to talk about today is a comment made by a certain regular poster and fellow blogger, who just happens to be a Sox fan. Here's one of his gems from about a week ago:
You're tied for first with 47 to play and you wanna see if a 22-yo can pitch? You're nuts. You don't have the luxury of experimenting right now, Sietz.
Intentional misspelling of my name notwithstanding, let's take a look at his line today against the vaunted Red Sox offense:

7.2 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 5 k, W

Consider the experiment a success. I'm certainly not the genius that the Fatman is, but it looks to me like the kid can pitch a little bit. In case he's still not convinced, Santana's got a 4.62 ERA, which includes an eye-popping 2.89 since the all-star break. Not bad for a fifth starter. Guess how many starters the Red Sox have with numbers that good since the break. Or even, try and guess how many they have with ERA's below 4.00 since the break. If you guess a big fat (no pun intended) ZERO, you'd be right (not including Papplewhateverhisnameis, who has two starts in that time).

Then again, we are talking about the guy who thinks that being third in the AL in strike outs isn't good enough to be considered a strike out pitcher.

So to sum up, send Escobar to the pen where he's most needed. If Byrd or Washburn go down, he's ready to start. It's really a no-brainer at this point.

5 comments:

Sean said...

I'm surprised you didn't mention the fact that Colon, Lackey, and Santana ALL had quality starts against that big scary Boston offense.

Seitz said...

Make it four after today.

Scott & Alex said...

I'm somehow (even more) stupid, cuz the Angels have better pitching than the Red Sox? Brilliant.

Let's not go congratulating the success of your experiment before it's even been conducted, Gilligan. Until Escobar is activated and moved to the pen, Santana's starting out of necessity.

I balked at the characterization of this year's team as significantly worse, UrClown. If/when Hazelwood finally banishes Millar and Nixon comes back, the offense will be just as good, if not better than last year. The middle relief last year came out of nowhere; Timlin's ERA is half what it was last year and Foulke could come back healthy; NOBODY was sure what to expect from Schill, Petey and D-Lowe last year. Schill was a gimp, D-Lowe had been fucking awful and Petey was going through his annual fatigue swoon with a Septemebr ERA of 4.95 in six starts. I feel at least as good about Schill/Clement/Wells-Miller going into a three-game series against whomever.

And congratulations, you got four QS at home and managed a split. You're a dynasty in the making.

Scott & Alex said...

From the LA Sietz post of 6/22/2024:

"Of course FatMan forgot about John Lackey...HA!"

Seitz said...

Oh, I'll be long dead by then.