Prayers and Praise
You tell a fan nothing, other than his favorite starting pitcher expended 100 chucks through five frames, and the appropriate response ninety nine percent of the time is a wince. If your favorite pitcher is Livan Hernandez, however, this information should be met with the query,
Yeah? How'd he do?
Hernandez, did one better than the 100 in five gig, spinning 121 pitches in fifty seven varieties over six innings, yielding a dozen total hits and walks, and resulting, somehow, in just one run. Sure, he was lucky, the beneficiary of a fine bases -jammed, two out headlong snare off the shallow LF grassblades by Eric Byrnes, but he was also devilishly smart, pitching away from batters' strengths, and setting them up for failure when he desperately needed an out.
Most pitchers who work slowly with high 
pitch counts are maddening to watch because there's rarely a method to their madness..no advantage or discernable purpose to their mound marathons. But Livan is different, a poor man's Luis Tiant with a pinch of Tom Glavine, he acutely understands his own limitations...and those of his opponents, and is stubborn enough to pitch off that knowledge rather than pretend to be the kind of pitcher he clearly is not.
Livan may not be The Most Interesting Man In The World, but I could watch him all day, which is close to how long it usually takes.
A day after gushing about the D*Backs offensive potential, and their comebackability versus established hurlers (Zito, Wells), our scarlet O'Haras laid down against Brad Penny and friends, eking out a lone run, even that generated by Andre Ethier's dubious play of Eric Byrnes soft liner into a triple. And this afternoon, they're scoreless through six against basketball player Mark Hendrickson.
So, maybe we ought to rethink this whole "praise" thing. Perhaps we've been too nice to Bob Melvin too, heaping kudos for his unconventional insertion of Orlando Hudson into the three hole, when we should be berating him for leading off Chris Young and batting Carlos Quentin down in the order. At this point in his career, Young is a terrible leadoff candidate. He's woefully inconsistent, doesnt reach base much, most of his offensive value is in his power and he hardly ever GIDP. Other than his baserunning, he's the last guy you want leading off. Furthermore, his entire minor league career, the one in which he's not once hit .300, gives absolutely no indication that he'll reach base consistently any time soon.
Quentin, on the other hand, has a better than solid minor league history of high OBP, fueled largely by a dynamite isolated averages(OBP-BA). And he's clearly and consistently carried that over to the majors with hardly a blink, despite being plunked just once (his specialty) so far and barely starting to hit. In all of 2006, the entire Dbacks team had six instances where a player drew three walks in a game - four instances, if you dont count intentional walks. Again, that's for the entire team. Carlos Quentin had a pair of three walk games, by himself, and it wasnt over a year...it was just this week! So Bob's been batting him sixth, seventh and today moved him up to...sigh...fifth, while Chris Young, on pace to draw thirty walks and have the lowest OPB among starters, once again leads off the run deficient festivities.
Not the way to win games in a low run environment like Chavez Ravine. All other things being equal, if Quentin and Young had flipflopped last night, the Dbacks would've won the game. Let's hope Bob's myopia regarding his team's best leadoff option doesnt lead to yet another loss this afternoon.
(photos courtesy of Francis Specker/AP)
I believe hitting woes come from Melvin's constant lineup shuffling. He picked his lineup at the conclusion of Spring Training, so he should have stuck with it. Why else have Spring Training? Then let that lineup feel itself out for a month. If there is improvement by the end of April, then keep it. If not, change it up. Changing it daily does nothing beneficial for this ballclub and THAT is the sole reason this team hasn't had a high RBI guy on a BoMel team (I don't consider Glaus's 97 high).
If a player can't hit in the #1 hole as well as the #3 hole then boohoo tell the player to stop making excuses and to learn to hit. A fastball is a fastball whether you're 1-9 or on the bench.
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The impact of frequent, or daily, lineup changes is an interesting subject, one I dont have my hands around too well.
My impression is that frequent changes to exploit historical platoon advantages makes sense, but the benefit of playing the "hot hand" is, I think, more tenuous, depending on how one defines "hot hand".
If you go by the previous day's results too much, you end up getting a lower return than you would have by just leaving everything alone, playing your best players; kinda like in fantasy baseball or chasing(rather than anticipating) a hot commodity in the stock market.
The lack of a big RBI guy is chicken and egg, I think. No one establishes themselves as a big bopper, so Melvin tries different combos, or is it he tries too many combos so no one has a chance to establish themself?
Maybe a little of both, but I lean towards the former. This team hasnt had a big hitter since Clark in 05, and doesnt appear to have one this year either.
As we've both said elsewhere -that's a problem.
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No big bopper a problem? Not necessarily.
You've predicted 800 runs for this team. That is a LOT of runs. Really good offenses get that run total. However, we need to compare this to league pitching. If pitching rebounds this year to historical norms, then 800 runs is very good whether we have a bopper or not. However if league pitching is just at crappy as last year, then 800 "won't be enough" to win. I hope I'm making sense. Basically I'm referring to the stats Runs Scored per Game and Run Allowed per Game. So, as the team allows more runs per game, they need to score more per game in order to keep the odds in their favor to win each game.
To further add on my thoughts, I think the proper lineup would expose the boppers already on our team. I would hit Quentin 3rd for the power potential, and Jackson 4th for the RBI potential. I can't explain my logic here other than that I simply FEEL this is the right lineup to have.
After all, this team supposedly IS rebuilding, so therefore the logical thing to do is to take the extra losses like a man in order to truly determine where the players belong in the lineup when the team is ready to contend. If that means hitting Drew cleanup for a month, then do it. This team won't win anything this season, 08, 09, whenever if Bob Melvin continues to experiment with the lineup every day of the week.
To put it into perspective: He still doesn't know where to hit Chad Tracy.
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Based on 9+ years of park adjusted stats, 800 runs in our particular park,roughly represents a league average offense.
Many preseason prognosticators projected that for this team, but backed off after a dismal April that translates to an annualized 660 runs - about the same as the 1998 team. That's logical, safe, understandable, whatever. My prediction, made AFTER the April doldrums, however, is unusual and perhaps crazy. You wont find too many takers on the 800 run theory today, believe me. But I like to buck conventional wisdom and I have my reasons. Basically, they need to average 5.2 runs per game over the remainder of the season to reach 800 - that's not the most likely scenario, but I dont think it's as unlikely as some think either.
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Not thinking they'll average 5.2 runs per game - but way to stick to your guns.
Some links on batting order/lineup effects:
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~raj/writing/BattingOrder.html
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/lineup-balance/
http://www.retrosheet.org/Research/SmithD/Batting%20Order%20Lineup2006.pdf
http://www.birdsinthebelfry.com/managing_to_fill_out_the_lineup.htm
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