Did you know?

Kyle Farnsworth has had 13 consecutive scoreless appearances.

No, really. (That log doesn’t include today’s scoreless inning.) If I hadn’t looked it up, I wouldn’t have believed it either.

Candidates for Pumpkin

Back around Halloween, I thought of putting up a list of relief pitchers whom I thought had a pretty good chance of turning into “pumpkins” in 2009–a more extreme version of regression to the mean; these were guys who had Cinderella seasons in 2008 but didn’t have much of a previous MLB track record to tell if their ‘08 performances were fluky or not.

The guys I had tagged for pumpkins based on 2007 were Peter Moylan and Hideki Okajima and my suspicions about the latter were quite founded. My suspicions about the former were also on the mark, as he was either going to fall to earth or get hurt due to overuse. Moylan’s not having a very good 2009, either, but that’s likely due to coming back too soon after injury.

Here’s my list of pumpkins for 2009:
Grant Balfour, Tampa Bay Rays;
Craig Breslow, Minnesota Twins;
Hong-Chih Kuo, Los Angeles Dodgers.

(I dismissed Cliff Lee and Ryan Dempster from the Pumpkin Report because they are essentially veteran players, and I also excluded Seth McClung because his performance was less Cinderella and more like, I don’t know, Hime-chan no Ribon–it only lasted for an hour and it wasn’t spectacular.)

on Jeff Suppan, #1 starter (and playoff fail)

I’m not worried. The rankings of 1-5 starters, in the first place, are more for us to determine the skill of pitchers rather than where their managers actually have them slotted in the rotation. Just because he’s starting Opening Day doesn’t make him the best starter; it just makes him the guy Ken Macha thought was ready now.

I think that most of the Suppan hate on the Brewers corners of the internets should be more accurately aimed at Doug Melvin (for signing a league-average starter to an elite contract; admittedly it was a lousy year for FA pitchers) and Ned Yost (for being completely incapable of determining when to pull a pitcher.) Suppan is what it says on his statistical tin. The other part of the hate is probably due to his completely blowing Game 4 of the 2008 NLDS, but who else could the Brewers have put in to pitch? Mark DiFelice wasn’t on the postseason roster and Seth McClung had to mop up CC Sabathia’s massive mess in Game 2. None of the starters except David Bush could have been said to be “on” during the NLDS; blame Sabathia for being Captain Choke and Ben Sheets for mistiming an injury. (Not that Sheets could have helped it, but he could have said something before Yost got fired. Not that Lindsay Gulin would have been much of an upgrade, but his presence could have prevented McClung and Sabathia from pulling the 3 days’ rest game for half the month.)

cold spring days indoors

I have secured tickets to the May 2nd Brewers game at Miller Park. According to the official site, lots of other people had the same general idea. Unfortunately, it’s not adding to my Teams Seen In Person total as I saw the Diamondbacks play the Twins in Minnesota last year. Due to general uncertainty, I’ll be waiting to get any other Brewers tickets. Milwaukee is a long and annoying six hours away, after all.

Twins single game tickets go on sale next Saturday. I’m going to attempt to get tickets for the last series at the Dome, even if they are in GA, because goodness knows I’ve seen the Twins play the Royals at the end of the year every year between 1987-93 and in 2007-08, and some Royals game in ‘01 that wasn’t at the end of the season. If I don’t see the Royals play the Twins in any given year that I’m actually attending Twins games, something is wrong. Since the other series the Royals are in town is the same weekend I’ll be in Milwaukee, I must go at the end of the year. Simple as that.

As for Warm Summer Days Outdoors, I’ll be heading for Detroit to see the Brewers attempt to beat them in June. Hopefully Verlander won’t no-hit them again.

apparently Joe Maddon never learns

We all saw Game 3 of the 2008 World Series, right?

To sum up, J.P. Howell hit a Phillie in the bottom of the 9th with the score tied. Maddon brings in Grant Balfour. Balfour and Dioner Navarro pilot the failboat on the next batter with a wild pitch/error combination, getting the winning runner to 3rd. Maddon decides to have Balfour intentionally walk the next two batters as well as bringing in Ben Zobrist as a 5th infielder, bringing up bases loaded for the craptacular-hitting Carlos Ruiz. Ruiz promptly lays down an infield hit that Evan Longoria doesn’t have enough patience to see if it rolls foul, and it’s Game Over.

That was awful enough, but then I remember that Maddon’s done this sort of stupid managing before. Shawn Camp gives up a double to Ichiro…and promptly gets pulled. (It’s Ichiro, he gets hits over 1/3 of the time; giving up hits to Ichiro is not a sign of fail.) Seth McClung gets put in, Jose Lopez has Fun With Sacrifice Hits and gets Ichiro over to 3rd. Maddon makes McClung walk the next two batters to bring up Richie Sexson. (McClung can walk guys on his own, dude, he doesn’t need encouragement. Anyway.) Sexson was not being a quality hitter at all in August 2006, but there is one thing that Sexson could do–hit homers. McClung was good at giving up homers. You put the two together and there is only one result: Hot Grand Slam Action! (Both McClung and Maddon expected a ground ball. Oops.)