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2013 SP Guide
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Vin Scully marveled at the Cardinals’ celebration of Allen Craig‘s homer, calling it the Hero’s Line. Like Scully I hadn’t seen this before and also like Scully, I loved it! Scully would’ve preferred it for a Dodger, but I was plenty fine with Craig being the recipient of this celebration.
The Tampa Rays are two days from the Danger Zone!!!
I desperately hope that Chris Archer pitches on Saturday.
Finally got the approval notice from iTunes that TINSTAAPP is good to go! It should be searchable in no more than a couple of days. Here is the link.
Welcome to the second episode of TINSTAAPP: There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Podcast! Hey we have a name! Everything is neatly cataloged so you can decide what segment best fits the time you have available. We should be in iTunes soon, too. Just awaiting their approval.
In the meantime you can add the RSS feed into your podcatcher: http://tinstaapp.libsyn.com/rss
Show Notes:
Jeremy Guthrie has a 3.06 ERA through five starts which looks like a continuation of his post-trade work with the Royals from last season when he had a 3.16 ERA in 91 innings over 14 starts. All told, he had a 3.14 ERA in 123 2/3 innings with 1.10 WHIP. He is blasting the zone resulting in a minuscule 5.8 percent walk rate – a marked improvement over his 6.9 percent career rate. His strikeout rate is at 16 percent as a Royal, up from a 14.3 career mark. Everything seems to suggest he has found a new level of production in his early-30s with his new club.
That strikes me as odd, though.
You don’t usually see a guy with 1111 innings of a certain level of production become something significantly better in their 30s. At least not without a major change in their pitch mix either by adding a pitch or using what he has differently. There hasn’t been any of that with Guthrie which made his improvement even more suspicious. This split of his innings as a Royal definitely stood out:
| Guthrie |
IP |
ERA |
WHIP |
K% |
BB% |
| vs. CWS |
35.7 |
0.50 |
0.81 |
21% |
2% |
| vs. Rest |
87.7 |
4.21 |
1.31 |
14% |
7% |
Guthrie has owned his Saturday night opponent since becoming a Royal and it is driving his new found success. Against the rest of the league, he’s simply been the solid, if unspectacular Jeremy Guthrie we’ve known for nearly a decade, but he’s a Cy Young frontrunner against the Pale Hose. Let’s see if he continues the dominance tonight in Kauffman Stadium.
For those wondering, two of these five starts have come in Kauffman Stadium and he’s allowed five runs, but only one earned in 13 2/3 innings with nine strikeouts and two walks.
The title should say it all. (click if it doesn’t work immediately)
From the gentlemen who brought you the 2013 Starting Pitching Guide comes a brand new podcast dedicated to… wait for it … pitching!!! We started discussing the notion of this podcast all the way back in the winter when we first linked up to discuss the guide. Then after the success of the SP Guide and just how well we got along, it was a no-brainer to follow through with that original idea and thus a pilot episode is born. For those of you who like long-form podcasts, you’re going to be drooling over this one.
That said I think I’ve come up with a way for it to appeal to even those who don’t like long-form. If you want to stretch the podcast out throughout your work week, I have labeled all of our segments by timestamp so you can pick & choose what you want to listen to as it fits your available time. We don’t yet have a name for the show, but I think we’ve decided one and once it’s set in stone, we’ll be in iTunes. We will also be setting up the obligatory email, Facebook page, and Twitter accounts, too. Until then, we would love your emails at thespguide@gmail.com for questions you would like answered on the show.
This is entirely a starting pitcher episode, but it’s a pitching podcast at large so if you have questions about relievers, that works. We do inject a little fantasy baseball talk into the show, but we’re not fielding any “should I trade for pitcher x or cut pitcher z?” questions. My other show, The Towers of Power Fantasy Hours, is fantasy-related and that would be the avenue for those types of questions. We also encourage you to watch our Game of the Week discussed starting at the 2:55:05 mark so you can follow along as we discuss it on next week’s episode.
Without further ado, our pilot episode:
Download the file here. (right click, save as)
Show Notes:
Lots of goodies this week, including several today (right now, in fact)
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
—–
ULTIMATE MATCHUP – Darvish/Lester
UNDERCARD MATCHUP – Cobb/Shields
Nat’s reliever Henry Rodriguez wants to save Kurt Suzuki’s arm a bit instead having the ball come back on its own.
