Harry Rodriguez is having one of those seasons that frustrates managers to no end...oh wait that is me. His last outing was a 1-0 win over Pittsburgh this morning. Pretty good for a lefty and an 8-8 season record you would think. Just look at his stats, is his record deserving on an 8-8 record with 12 no decisions? His stats are just as good as Reagan Mathews, who will probably win the NL Cy Young, if not better. Two bad starts during the season where he gave up 12 earned runs that ballooned his ERA to a robust 2.27 otherwise it would be under 2.00. Why does he get no offensive support when he pitches? I have had this happen before elsewhere and have not come up with a good answer.
I imagine everyone was wondering about my post about the catching debacle earlier in the season. I made a change to fix the problem replacing a much better hitter, well not that much better really, for defense at game 104. We just hit the 140 game mark so that makes 36 games in all since the change. We are no longer leading the NL in SBA as we have just been passed by Louisville for that devastating honor and a host of others will bypass us in pretty short order from the looks of things. It isn't that we have been playing non-running teams either but there have only been 19 attempts in those 36 games. Why so few? We have thrown out 12 of those 19. The CS% has improved from .261 to .309 and that is a huge improvement. At one point the team was ahead of the D'Backs in DP's by 1 and that has increased to 10 and good enough for next to last in that category. That doesn't sound like much of an improvement but at the same time we were 48 behind the next team on the list, not sure if it was the Giants who are there now. We are only 24 behind on the list now and seemingly able maybe catch up to a large pack.
The big question on every ones mind, has it helped us win ballgames? That is a debatable question as we are only 19-15 since the change but most of those loses have come in the last 13 games. I have been trying a few different things in those games that have garnered very limited success. You can do that with a 12 game lead and the magic number is down to 10.
I have always wondered why Leo Rodney and his batting average is always so low compared to his contemporaries. That axiom I used the other day about walks being good as a hit comes into play with him. Walks are not calculated into batting average and neither are HBP's. Therefore you need to use OBP instead of his batting average. Believe it or not he ranks 9th in the NL in OBP. The bad part about the situation I don't like is the fact his power numbers may be suffering from the situation. It sure does cause him to be omitted from the All-Star roster and that is a shame.
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