B-Log: Lineups and Umpiring
Posted: June 24th, 2008 | Filed under: Banny Log | 52 Comments »
Start No. 16: Vs. Colorado Rockies
Innings: 7
Hits: 3
Earned runs allowed: 0.
Strikeouts: 5
Walks: 6 (Yikes!)
Homers: 1
Extra base hits: 1.
Decision: Win (7-6)
Number of pitches: 113
Number of strikes: 66
BABIP: .176 (3 for 17)
Season BABIP: .286
Well, Banny made it pretty clear after his last outing against St. Louis that he worked too much in the strike zone — he felt like he had to do that coming off a career-high 127 pitch performance. That wasn’t a problem on Monday; he walked a career-high six batters, including three in one inning.
I have not had a chance to ask him, but it sure looked to me like he got a little frustrated with the home plate umpire. Or maybe that was me … I don’t know. I probably say this every year, but doesn’t it seem like ball-strike umpiring is more inconsistent than ever before? I“m not saying it’s WORSE than before, because it isn’t, I don’t think that strike zone umpiring will ever be worse than it was during the S.E. when you basically had to pitch the ball between the patella and tibia to get a called strike*.
*Except against Barry Bonds or Frank Thomas … called strikes were purely theoretical against them.
No, the strike zone is generally better now. It’s generally a lot better. At least now umpires will generally call the waist-high pitch a strike. But you do have to keep using that word â€generally,“ because, honest to Pujols, it sure seems like the strike zone changes its look every other day, not unlike Charlize Theron. I suppose umpires have always had slightly different strike zones, but now it’s like you’ll get a Pat Buchanan strike zone one day, a Michael Moore strike zone the next day, a Roger Ebert strike zone one day, a Gene Siskel strike zone one day*, a John McCain in 2000 strike zone one day, a John McCain in 2008 strike zone the next day … it’s all over the place. And yes, I know, that was a McCain cheap shot, but these are the jokes people. I’ll get an Obama cheap shot in somewhere down the road to even things out.
*Roger Ebert turned 66 last week, and I’ve been thinking that if there was a legitimate Hollywood Hall of Fame rather than a Hollywood WALK of Fame where you pay to get your handprint in concrete, then Ebert would be a first ballot, no doubt Hall of Famer. Right? I’ve got to think that nobody, not even the biggest actors of the last 40 years, has done more to promote movies and enhance the experience of Hollywood than Ebert. I remember reading a business story once that said Ebert was worth something like a billion dollars to the movie rental business — that a movie was (I don’t remember the figures; I’m making this up as I go along), something like four times more likely to be rented if it had a thumbs up from Roger Ebert. But I also think that the Ebert factor has not been anything close to the same since the death of Gene Siskel. I know that the TV show has gone on — Ebert & Roeper, Ebert & Medved, Ebert & Kathy Lee, Ebert & Lewis, Ebert & Ginger Rogers — but it hasn’t been the same since Gene-O. Maybe they should go into the Hall together a la Whitaker and Trammell.
Anyway, the strike zone on Monday was just plain weird. In the second inning, Banny faced Brad Hawpe and he threw three different pitches that could have been called strikes but were not. One of those was the sort of pitch you would put in the rulebook as a strike definition — above the knees, middle of the plate. Anyway, Banny seems to keep his emotions more or less in check, but during that at-bat I definitely got a â€What the heck do I have to do here“ vibe. Against Chris Ianetta he threw another ball that could have been a strike — threw almost precisely the same pitch the next time and it WAS a strike, so he was one for two anyway — and he walked Ianetta too. And then he just seemed a little bit out of rhythm — between innings catcher John Buck said Banny didn’t like the way the ball was coming out of his hand or something like that.
I actually thought that despite the wildness, Banny was about as hard to hit as he had been this year. He was really working the plate, he was keeping the ball down. He made one bad pitch in the fifth — up and over the plate to Matt Holliday — but he should have been out of the inning anyway; Esteban German dropped a fly ball. If German catches that ball, Banny has a no hitter going through five innings. Just saying.*
*OK, I just cracked up reading Brilliant Reader Don’s usage of the word â€Molinas“ as a measurement of speed — he suggests it takes Jose Reyes .05 Molinas to get to first base. I heartily endorse this new measurement, which I would like to present to the International Board of Speed Measuring in Geneva this fall. I will question Don’s theory that it took Jason Phillips 1.5 Molinas to get to first base … I do not believe this to be true. I believe that when Einstein theorized that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, he proved conclusively that nothing moves slower than a Molina and, as such, matter can only be judged truly by their Molina speed.
A John Grisham novel: 0.03 Molinas.
Adrian Peterson: 0.00004 Molinas.
A Dustin Hoffman speech: .97 Molinas.
Barack Obama’s willingness to leave Reverend Wright’s church: 0.86 Molinas.
Barack Obama’s willingness to leave Reverant Wright’s church once he realized it could cost him the presidency: 0.00000000000000000001 Molinas.
Told you the cheap shot was coming. We’re ripping everybody today.
But beyond Banny, I’ve been thinking about lineups lately. Baseball Musings has a fun lineup analysis chart which allows you to plug in some numbers, and it then estimates how many runs different versions of the lineup would score. I don’t know how accurate it is of course — I would have to play about 10,000 games of Strat-o-Matic before I could tell — but it seems pretty good, and it reminds you that over time the difference between the best possible lineup and a lineup so stupid that even Bob Boone woudn’t try it is probably not worth even one run a game. For fun, I ran a lineup that featured five of the greatest seasons in baseball history and four of the worst just to see the difference.
This lineup averaged 7.24 runs per game.
Barry Bonds, LF
Ruth, RF,
McCovey, 1B
Mantle, CF
Brett, 3B
Pena Jr, SS
LaRue, C
Neifi, DH
Billy Ripken, 2B
This lineup averaged 6.09 runs per game
Pena Jr., SS
LaRue, C
McCovey, 1B
Neifi, DH
B. Ripken, 2B
Bonds, LF
Brett, 3B
Mantle, CF
Ruth, RF
Now, obviously, you will never have that contrasting a lineup … and even that difference is barely more than one run per game.
…
…
…
… Sorry for the pause, I was just trying to imagine the press session with the manager trying to explain why he was leading off Tony Pena Jr., and hitting Babe Ruth ninth. I have been around some baseball managers who would flat try to do it, they would tell you that they wanted power at the bottom of the lineup, and Pena’s swinging the bat better and so on. Anyway.
Yes, anyway, I punched in the Royals lineup numbers … I tinkered with them slightly because I suspect that Mike Aviles may not maintain his .632 slugging percentage — though I like him a lot, gave him a .513 slugging percentage for the heck of it — and I suspect that Mark Grudzielanek’s .359 on-base percentage might come down some because he’s 38 years old and his lifetime on-base percentage is 27 points lower than that. I considered tinkering with it a little more — but no, I left the others intact. I was just curious to see how the Musings System suggest Trey Hillman play the lineup.
Here was the most productive lineup, using the nine players the Royals seem to be using most:
Gordon, 3B
Aviles, SS
Teahen, RF
DeJesus, CF
Guillen, LF
Grudzielanek, 2B
Buck, C
Olivo, DH
Gload, 1B
This lineup scores 4.907 runs per game. You could also, apparently, flip Buck and Grud without losing or gaining anything.
Interestingly, the worst lineup ALSO had Teahen in the third spot.
Olivo, DH
Gload, 1B
Teahen, RF
Buck, C
Grudzielanek, 2B
DeJesus, CF
Aviles, SS
Gordon, 3B
Guillen, LF
This lineup scores 4.556 runs per game … so, about .35 runs per game fewer, which ain’t much. That’s only one run every three days — about 57 runs per year.
Still, you want to be as efficient as possible, so here’s what I take from these lineups:
1. Alex Gordon in the leadoff spot is an intriguing possibility to me. I personally like Mark Teahen in the leadoff spot and have said so on many occasions, but Gordon serves many of the same purposes. I noticed that a reader took from a previous comment that I am down on Gordon, and I really am not … I just don’t think he’s proven anything yet. I believe he’s going to be a very good player, an All-Star, but he isn’t one yet, and I’m leery of anticipatory stardom. In any case, Alex leads the Royals in walks, he has shown extra base power, I think he could be a pretty good fit as a leadoff guy. I still like Teahen a little better up there.
2. I am 100% in favor of moving David DeJesus down into a power spot in the lineup. I think David has been miscast as a leadoff hitter for a long time — as you can tell by his 56% stolen base percentage. He’s not fast, but he can sting the ball, he has gap power for sure, he gets on hot streaks, I would LOVE to see this guy hit No. 3 for a consistent period of time, I really think he would thrive in that atmopshere.
3. Miguel Olivo would definitely not make for a good leadoff man.
4. I think that the whole idea of â€backing up some speed“ at the bottom of the lineup is probably not based in much reality. The Royals try this pretty often when they put Joey Gathright in the ninth spot. Maybe there are studies that show it’s good to have a sort of second-leadoff man hitting ninth, but I doubt it … seems to me that the only thing you know for sure about the ninth hitter is that his spot will come up less often than anyone else’s.
5. This doesn’t have anything to do with the lineup itself, but I have two points to make about Jose Guillen.
First point, he’s about as hot as anyone I’ve ever seen — I mean hot in how hard he consistently hits the ball. It’s incredible. He is about guaranteed to hit three balls really, really hard every single game. I am on record, of course, in saying that the Guillen signing wasn’t a good one (and there are still two years left after this one), but I’m ready for all the crow that anyone can muster. The guy’s a phenomenon. The guy is like Augusta in July hot. The guy has had 14 multiple hit games in his last 21, and I’m telling you, he’s probably had 20 impossibly hard-hit outs during that time.
The Jose-Emil comparisons now look about as laughable as many had suggested:
Jose Guillen: .293/.313/.517, 28 doubles, 13 homers, 60 RBIs, 117 OPS+.
Emil Brown: .245/.287/.363, 9 doubles, 2 triples, 5 homers, 39 RBIs, 80 OPS+.
Fine, I’m an idiot, That’s the first point.
The second point, though, is that I would suggest that Jose Guillen is doing something that is probably pretty close to unprecedented — he is about as hot as you can possibly be and at the exact same time he has now gone 156 plate appearances without walking. I mean, that’s just flat incredible. Over that time, he’s hitting .359/.365/.634. But he has not walked even once. He’s had Miguel Olivo, Mark Teahen and Mark Grudzielanek hitting behind him. And he has still not walked. It’s an amazing streak, much more amazing than other great non-walk streaks like Tony Pena Jr.s’ or Mark Quinn’s or Pudge Rodriguez or whoever. There is absolutely NO REASON for pitchers to pitch to Jose Guillen. And they still can’t walk him.
In fact, they can rarely throw three balls by him. Jose has only faced five 3-0 counts all year and only fifteen 3-1 counts. This guy’s hacking … he puts the ball in play on the first two pitches about one-third of the time. Hey, no complaint here, when you’re squaring the ball up as well and as often as Jose does, you can’t question it. Still, I’ll bet this is unique — I’ll bet nobody has hit this well during a 150 PA no-walk streak. Of course, I could be wrong. In fact, I already was.
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I was at the Mets-Rockies game on Sunday. Here’s Hawpe’s line from that game.
AB R H HR RBI BB
0 0 0 0 0 4
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a batter walk 4 times in one game, when none were intentional passes. Brad Hawpe is a walking MACHINE right now.
Banny should not feel bad about walking him right now.
Hang on a second Joee I just wan to to clarify that the Walk of Fame (which is worthless) and the Sidewalk at Mann’s Chinese Theater (Formerly Grauman’s Chinese Theater and still pretty cool) are not connected beyond their location. As a Hollywood resident I’d like to offer a quick way to tell the two apart:
Hollywood Walk of Fame has Jamie Farr and just added The Village People.
Mann’s Chinese Theater Has Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant
Thanks for the link.
Here’s a pretty good streak by Joe Carter.
It’s okay. We all know you voted for Obama in the Missouri primary, though Dennis Kucinich will always be your favorite.
Regarding your “Best Color Commentator” poll. I can’t believe that you didn’t include Hubie Brown. In my opinion, he is far and away the best color commentator. Almost every time I watch a game that he is working, I learn something about the subtleties of the game that I didn’t know before, and I’m no particular fan of the NBA.
I think you’re wrong about Ebert’s impact. It’s bigger now that Siskel is gone. Which is not a comment on Siskel. It’s just that once Siskel passed away, the yawning gulf in writing skill and/or integrity between Ebert and every other reviewer in the business became even harder to ignore. Until his recent health problems, his power over the industry approached the absolute.
As someone who appreciates a good walk now and then, I have seen slightly similar batting lines to Guillen. I mean in that a player will hit well and not walk, sort of like Vlad. It seems to always happen to players that don’t miss a good pitch. If you get a good pitch and smack a line drive most of the time, then not walking is just fine. Howie Kendrick was like this in the minors for the Angels, and he may yet do it in the majors. (There are others that escape me right now). I’ll take a .900 OPS and not expect them to walk too.
“Neifi, DH” — I had to look, and fortunately, no major league manager ever was crazy enough to use Neifi Perez as a designated hitter. Billy Ripken did DH five times in his career, because you just can’t keep that bat out of the lineup.
One ought not to mention Roger Ebert without citing his review of “North.”
<a href=http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19940722%2FREVIEWS%2F407220302%2F1023&AID1=%2F19940722%2FREVIEWS%2F407220302%2F1023&AID2=That has been rectified.
Strike zones changing from game to game is one thing. On Monday, it seemed to shift from inning to inning. If they were in Colorado, I might have passed it off as a fluke of altitude or shifting in the crustal plates beneath the Rockies.
Sorry
Joe,
I think you’re selling short just how valuable a lineup that scores 4.9 runs per game would be. The difference seems small, but if the Royals ran out an optimal lineup that did actually scored 4.9 RPG, you’d be watching a whole different team; a team team that would have scored 378 runs so far, as opposed to the meager 310 runs* it’s actually scored. This would give them a positive run differential of +17, juxtapose that with the amazingly crappy -51 run differential they currently have, and you’d be watching a team that would have a pythag W% somewhere around .520 — and that’s a very real, tangible difference.
*holy crap! 310 runs? Are the Royals actually performing worse than the worst possible predicted lineup? Say it ain’t so!
Please please please don’t get political. I love this blog way too much and it would hurt a lot if I had to be wary of cringe-inducing prose from you. I’m just going to pretend that you don’t vote and have no political opinions, and you’ll play along, okay?
Also, Ramon Castro: .99 Molinas.
Two points about lineup construction:
1) The model used at Baseball Musings is based on linear regressions on OBP and SLG at the different lineup slots. It works well for lineups in the “normal” range, but because it fails to capture the interaction effects of hitters it fails at the extremes. Thus, while I believe the results for the Royals lineup, I am more skeptical about the fictional lineup you posted; to test that, you need something like a Markov Chain model, which would basically let you run 1000 Strat games instantly.
2) I think Joe is understating lineup effects a little. 57 runs over the course of a season is a lot; it would be worth, in expectation, 5.5 wins in the standings. Put another way, it is comparable to the difference, as hitters, between Torii Hunter and Albert Pujols. And 1.15 runs per game–the spread between the two fictional extreme lineups–is ENORMOUS, comparable to the gap between 2004 Barry Bonds and Neifi Perez.
In Cleveland, we use Garkoes to measure a lack of speed. This also doubles as the distance by which a player is thrown out after trying to take an extra base, usually at home after third base coach Joel Magoo waves him around.
Ironically, Jhonny Peralta was thrown out by 1.32 Garkoes on Sunday. There are no plans to convert to Peraltae.
(Victor Martinez may actually be slower, but the plural is hard to pronounce, and he rarely attempts to make his lack of speed manifest.)
Ebert is a hell of a writer.
You should watch an Astros game. Berkman would rank as about a .8 Molina, which makes it even more impossible to believe he’s already in double figures in SB. Let’s not even bring up Ausmus. Is there a negative Molina?
Here is a link to a Beyond the Boxscore article that explores the Baseball Musings model. It gives a little cheat sheet as well.
http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/story/2006/2/25/21329/9401
Friday and Saturday, the Cardinals dh’d Yadi Molina and Adam Kennedy in Boston — and won both games.
Roger Ebert is indeed a national treasure. A writer whose complete lack of affectation disguises an utter fluency and knack for the telling phrase that is absolutely brilliant.
Every April he comes to the University of Colorado for a week, and in five 2-hour sessions conducts a shot-by-shot analysis of a film of his choosing, including free-wheeling give-and-take from the audience, who are admitted free. Over the last several years I’ve been privileged to attend these “seminars” on Rules of the Game, La Dolce Vita, Casablanca, Vertigo, Citizen Kane, The Long Goodbye, and many others. I’m hoping hard that he somehow regains his ability to speak and can resume his appearances here.
“that a movie was (I don’t remember the figures; I’m making this up as I go along), something like four times more likely to be rented if it had a thumbs up from Roger Ebert.”
You’re kidding? Seriously? Has there EVER been a single movie made, in the history of EVER, that Roger Ebert hasn’t given a thumbs up on? He’ll give a Two Thumbs Way Way Up! on the most hideous, regurgitated Hollywood sequelitis TRASH that’s ever been produced.
A billion dollars?? ROGER EBERT????!
Well, now that I think about it, I guess he IS worth a billion dollars. He probably charged 25 cents for every thumbs up he gave.
Creston – I believe you must mean another Roger Ebert. Yes the guy has given a thumbs up to some movies that bombed but if you reviewed tens of thousands of movies you’d have a few bad ones in there that you screwed up on. Ebert is a treasure, a reviewer who truly loves movies and appreciates film history without being an elitist.
It’s true that Ebert tends to give higher ratings than most critics (and metacritic.com even attempted to quantify this). He’s explained this many times: in rating films, he takes into consideration what the film aspires to be. If, for example, a movie is intended to be no more than a formulaic Hollywood romantic comedy, but it’s a pretty good formulaic Hollywood romantic comedy, then he tends to go easy. Films with higher aspirations are graded on a tougher curve.
It’s also true that he hates both the “thumbs” gimmick and the star ratings and encourages readers to respond to the review itself, not the rating.
The guy is like Augusta in July hot.
As a native Augustan, I seriously doubt whether anybody has ever been that hot.
Also, watch a Braves game sometime and try to argue that Brian McCann is not at least 1.25 Molinas.
Great job ribbing in this post!!
But I must maintain, someone, from another AL Central team probably reads this blog and you’ve just inspired an IBB spree on Guillen.
Now I have to find another fantasy outfielder, thanks a lot.
It’s funny — in “The Book,” the authors did some studying on the “second leadoff hitter” theory and actually found that it has merit…but only in the National League. Apparently, a hitter has to be as bad a hitter as a pitcher in order for it to make sense to move him to 8th, so it doesn’t work in the American League. However, I’m thinking Tony Jr. might be an exception …
Creston –
I just finished reading a collection of Ebert reviews called “Your movie sucks.” He definitely does not take it easy on subpar films.
Not sure if it was an IBB but Guillen has walked in tonight’s game. So there you have it, you sort of jinxed the streak, eh?
Only 2 more years of Guillen after this? Hey, at least you don’t have 5 more of Zito and 4 more of Rowand (old, banged up Rowand after a couple of seasons).
nice layout change, btw
2 walks for Guillen, in fact.
Whoa, it’s a new layout, but it’s a pretty good one.
And kudos for Jose Guillen walking for the first time since May 15.
Argh! I’m not a fan of “Read More” layouts. I like multiple entries in their entirety on one page.
But it’s what you like, Joe!
I agree with Damon on the layout. The more Joe words on one page, the better!
and he walked *twice*
I tried to find your very first blog entry. Took forever! It’s on page 62 (or thereabouts).
I kindly request a more friendly navigation through the archives. Or at least point me to it, should I be overlooking it.
Thanks!
Ah, duh! I at least found the monthly archives pull-down menu. Still requires excessive clicking to get to the first entry of each month. Any way the archived monthly pages could list all the entries for that month on one page instead of four per page?
I suggest because I care.
You know, at the end of the season, you could take all these Banny logs and edit them into a nice book about a season in the major leagues for Brian Bannister (much expanded of course with interviews with Brian, including his comments on each game and his strategy and reactions to the events of each game.) It’d be a great look at a season for an “Average Brian” type of pitcher in the majors and what he goes through, how he succeeds or fails, etc.
I’d definitely read that book, but that is no indication that anyone else would.
Hell yes I would buy that book.
I miss the links at the top to the next and previous blog posts
Take a look at the Royals runs per game since Aviles became a starter. He has played 18 straight games, and during that time the Royals have scored 99 runs, for a 5.5 runs per game average. I know Guillen has been red hot, but you can’t discount the replacement of an automatic out (Pena) with a guy hitting .352/652/1.000+
Ewwww. Can I just say that I REALLY hate this current layout? I LOVED the other one. Why are replies now newest first? If you want to read through the whole thread, you have to start at the bottom and read up.
/sad.
I’m talking about the Ebert from Ebert and Roeper. That’s him, right?
I have NEVER, EVER rented a movie that didn’t have
“Two Thumbs Up” Roger Ebert
on the front cover. Ever. I think he gave two thumbs up to Epoch.
I’m really confused about the comments system. There is a reply button under every comment, but if you reply, it doesn’t put that reply with the original comment?
And it keeps telling me I already posted a reply to someone, but it’s not showing up?
I hate newfangled layouts. Darn kids. Get off my lawn!
My favorite Ebert opinion was the exchange he had a few years ago with Vincent Gallo over Gallo’s film ‘The Brown Bunny’ (for the record, I love Gallo and LOVE Buffalo ‘66, but these comments are just priceless)
Roger Ebert called the “The Brown Bunny” “the worst in the history of Cannes” to which Vincent Gallo responded that Ebert was a “fat pig with the physique of a slave trader.” Ebert paraphrased a remark of Winston Churchill’s and responded that “although I am fat, one day I will be thin, but Mr. Gallo will still have been the director of ‘Brown Bunny’.” Gallo then put a “hex” on Ebert’s colon, to which Ebert responded that “even my colonoscopy was more entertaining than his film.”
Thank goodness for Baseball Reference’s Play Index, because it allowed me to find Bo Diaz.
On June 25, 1987, Bo Diaz went to the plate for the Cincinnati Reds and started a streak of 147 at-bats without a walk, spanning 38 games and lasting through the 10th of August that same year. Over that span, Diaz hit .354 with nine doubles, a triple, and ten home runs, and knocked in 39 RBI. His OPS over that stretch was .988. (This for a player who, for the season, hit .270/721.) That’s not *quite* as good as Guillen’s .359/999 mark over his own 156 PAs, but it’s close enough that I’d let Diaz’s run count as evidence that Guillen’s run isn’t ‘unprecedented’.
‘Once in a generation’, on the other hand? That certainly seems defensible.
“This lineup scores 4.556 runs per game … so, about .35 runs per game fewer, which ain’t much. That’s only one run every three days — about 57 runs per year.”
The Royals are currently on pace to allow 751 runs. The best lineup scores 794, the worst 738. The best lieup would be a winning season, the worst a losing one. The difference is roughly five games (using the James’ Pythagorean Theorem, play with the exponents as you like) – again not much, but psychologically, a winning season would probably be huge for the fan base. Of course, the games already played may preclude catching up to .500 now, but it sure would be nice to have a winning season.
Here’s another pretty good streak, by Kirby Puckett: http://tinyurl.com/5l7y9h (for the B-R version) or http://tinyurl.com/6mjb7r (for the baseballmusings version)
From July 5 to Aug. 10, 1988, Puckett produced a pretty crazy .375/.367(!)/.599 line without walking for 139 consecutive PAs.
That’s about the closest comparison to Guillen’s stretch that I’ve found. In 1988, Puckett also had two other streaks of 74 and 88 PAs, respectively, without a walk in which he hit over .370 both times.
But nothing else remotely close to 150 PAs.
Here’s another: http://tinyurl.com/56smr4 (B-R)
Ichiro, from April 16 to May 16, 2001, had a 128-PA streak without walking. He hit about .375, with an OPS of ~.930 in that stretch.
Ahh, but here’s one for Guillen to aspire to: http://tinyurl.com/6rrfzv (B-R) or http://tinyurl.com/5m4ujc (BM)
Pudge Rodriguez, from July 3 to Aug. 18, 1999, had a 174-PA streak without a walk. Here’s his line: .366/.374/.674. He had 15 homers and 38 RBI in those 38 games, on his way, of course, to the American League MVP.
That seems to be the gold standard, at least of the last 50 years. Quite a few sluggers who might have compiled such streaks before then, especially Nap Lajoie.
At 7-7 as of 02 July, 2008 I ask as a Mets fan why Bannister “today” is not a better value & or teammate then Santana? Yes Santana has the lower era (3.01 vs. 4.88), but with 17 starts and 2.5 years Santana’s junior I ponder if the dollars make Brian’s 7 wins just as good as Johan’s?
Clearly Brian is not looking to throw teammates under the bus as Johan did on 2 occasions.
Mets need to stay away from BIG $ pitchers!
GLAVINE, PEDRO, Randy Jones and Johan can perhaps have a get together so they can all review their portfolios courtesy of Flushing.
;0(