:Poke:

Ouch.

Dude.

I irrationally hate your Sox, going all the way back to LaRussa and Hoyt and Dotson (although Prickzynski being gone is a point in your favor), but the Scott Carroll story from yesterday is ****in' win, completely.

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http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-bi...010923773.html

Maybe you'll get in trouble for this shit being here instead of me. Heh.

One point that isn't being mentioned: management's acceptance of it. When they are allowed to swing wet noodles up there, it's tolerated and they keep playing. I'd start sending messages to these pricks that if they don't start driving the ball (like our damn 2B can even do), they're sitting. Period. I'd start by taking away some of Fatty's ABs beginning this weekend.

Just tell them. Tell them it's not acceptable, and tell them they'll start losing playing time if it doesn't change.

You are just a glutton for punishment.

Gordon has broken twice as many bats as anyone in the history of the game because of his popeye forarms. At this point our MO is just going to be to scrap runs together. No one is good enough to drive the ball let alone turn on one and yank it out.

It's sad we're wasting such good pitching though. A halfway competent, league average offense would put us into the playoffs. And the point is Butler-Gordon-Hosmer should be way above league average hitters. If they were we'd be fine. This isn't on Aoki or Cain or Dyson etc.

But you need options or alternatives to do it. Don't want to incite a clubhouse revolt by doing things perceived to severely damage the team's chances at winning.

Yes. I was hopeful they could be a league-average offense this year. Even getting ONLY what they got last year out of those three guys, this would be a league-average offense.

Guys in the middle have to hit. If they don't...

Are we still undefeated when scoring 4+ runs? Maybe I'm unrealistic, but I would have thought they could muster 4 runs in at least 65% of their games this season. Obviously, they won't win all of those just based on this, but if you average it out - that's still a lot of cushion to win at least 90.

Hell, a .550 winning % is 89 games right there. .650 is 105 or 106.

That's how bad this offense has been.

Butler aside. What is troublesome is its indicative of a club philosophy on how they are approaching their plate appearances.

We're undefeated when scoring 4+ runs. I also believe we haven't won when scoring less than 4 runs.

Ding ding ding!

9 of our 12 losses, our pitching has held the opponent to 5 or fewer runs... and we've still lost the game. NINE OF TWELVE.

That is absolutely ridiculous.

Let's look at the data. We are 12-12 and have outscored our opponents 91-87. So our record is what it should be. We are 13/15 in runs and 2/15 in ERA. So we score 3.81 runs per game. League average: 4.43.


So we are only 86% of the league average. Suppose we were at that level instead. That would be .62 runs per which is 15 runs more. That puts us at 106 runs instead of 91. Running a league-average run total through the expected win/loss formula (Pythagorean) results in an expected final record of 91-71.

http://replacementlevel.com/stuff/sg/Calculators.html

That would be with a league Average offense.

Freaking amazing how good this pitching staff has been, especially when so many worried about Guthrie\Chen declining (which they have), an untested\young Ventura, and kind of a question mark in Vargas. It's only going to get better when Duffy takes over for Chen.