First off, congrats to Tony Gwynn on being named the SDSU Aztecs baseball coach.
Second, I’m going to throw out some stat lines for you. Don’t worry, I won’t leave you hangin’ till tomorrow like I usually do.
Here are the first two:
IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Player A | 190.2 | 217 | 122 | 107 | 29 | 81 | 112 | 5.05 |
Player B | 155.0 | 168 | 90 | 86 | 26 | 55 | 125 | 4.99 |
Clearly, neither of these guys is having a terrific season. Here’s what they did last year:
IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Player A | 217.2 | 194 | 89 | 76 | 10 | 99 | 151 | 3.14 |
Player B | 209.0 | 210 | 109 | 105 | 31 | 81 | 146 | 4.52 |
Okay, Player A is Mike Hampton and Player B is Denny Neagle. Both signed with the Rockies in the off-season, and almost universally Hampton was expected to succeed at Coors, while Neagle was expected to fail miserably. And for a while, it looked like that would be the case. Here are their numbers through May:
Now here is what they’ve done since then:
IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hampton | 77.1 | 77 | 29 | 23 | 4 | 24 | 46 | 2.68 |
Neagle | 66.0 | 63 | 35 | 33 | 9 | 23 | 56 | 4.50 |
One last set of splits for you:
IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hampton | 87.2 | 101 | 59 | 53 | 15 | 46 | 48 | 5.44 |
Neagle | 74.1 | 81 | 45 | 42 | 13 | 29 | 60 | 5.09 |
IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO | ERA | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Hampton | 103.2 | 116 | 63 | 54 | 14 | 35 | 64 | 4.72 |
Neagle | 80.2 | 87 | 45 | 44 | 13 | 26 | 65 | 4.91 |
Interestingly, and once again indicating that the value of a single run is less at Coors than in the real world, Hampton is 8-5 at home and 6-6 on the road; Neagle’s won-loss splits are 6-2 and 3-5, respectively.
No surprise that both pitchers have performed better on the road than at Coors. What I find interesting is that so many (myself included) could have been so wrong about their assessments of these two free-agent signings. I wish I had a good theory for why this happened but I don’t. If anyone has thoughts on this, I’d love to hear them. I’m sure Dan O’Dowd would like to hear them, too; somehow I can’t imagine this is what he had in mind when he dropped all that money on Hampton.
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