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  1. Short recap: Another heartbreaker! Boy am I getting tired of saying that. Jays go into the 9th inning tied 4-4 and wind up losing 5-4 to the Red Sox. Both Hinske and Wells homered off of Pedro and went 2 for 4. Hudson also went 2 for 4. Lilly didn't have a spectacular night going 7 innings, alowing 4 runs on 6 hits, 2 of them homers, 4 walks and 5 strikeouts. For a lefty in Fenway against these mashers, that's not too bad.

    Longer recaps:


  2. Fordin Notes on a tough game on Monday for Gabe Gross and the comeback of Jason Arnold. I really like how Gross handled media questions:

      A few frames later, he tried to make a sliding stop along the left-field foul line. He didn't come up with either, and to make matters worse, he made a perfect relay throw to third base that got dropped.

      "I felt like I definitely should've made the one down the line. The other one, I didn't think I was going to get to, but right at the last second, I was almost able to make that play," he said. "That's baseball. I'll go out, lay out for another one tomorrow, maybe come up with it."


    Although the season may be lost Gross and Rios give two reasons to go to the ballpark.

  3. Rutsey Notes on pitchers Ted Lilly, Justin Miller, and Jason Arnold. Ted Lilly hasn't been happy with his performances lately:

      "I'm really frustrated at the inconsistency of my command right now," said Lilly, who has one win, four losses and four no-decisions in his past nine starts.

      "That's what's been on my mind the last few starts. If I can eliminate the walks and deep counts, especially walking the guys I don't want to (weaker hitters) and it's putting me in a jam and making it tough on me."


    Lilly may not have been Cy Young material last night, but I don't think it'd be fair to blame last night's loss on him.

  4. Rutsey and Fordin are not the only ones writing about Jason Arnold. Larry Millson's "Good news brewing for Jays down on the farm" discusses Arnold's return from rehabbing a torn labrum. It took a few games for Arnold and the Jays to figure out what was wrong:

      Back on July 31, Arnold and Miller both pitched simulated games at Knology Park in Dunedin as they prepared to return to pitching in games. Arnold made seven starts with the Syracuse SkyChiefs of the Triple-A International League when his problems developed.

      "My last three starts, my arm would get tired in the fifth or sixth inning and then it started hurting between starts," Arnold said. "And by the end I'd be in the third inning I would feel like I was in the eighth inning.

      "My velocity just started going way down. I was actually pitching okay. . . . It was just that my arm was dead after three or four innings That's not normal."

    I'm rooting pretty hard for Jason Arnold. He's by all accounts a nice guy, and a healthy Arnold would bolster the Jays pitching staff.

  5. Can the Jays avoid being swept? Tonight's 7:05PM EST battle of righties certainly looks winnable for the Jays. The Red Sox are sending the 8-7 Tim Wakefield to the hill while the Jays counter with the 9-8 Miguel Batista. Once again Spencer Fordin has a game preview

  6. In "Jays hurlers hit August dry spell Richard Griffin discusses the recent struggles of relievers Chulk and Frasor and the possibility that the Jays could lose 100 games this year.


Sorry for the lateness of this roundup. Whoever said that Canada has two seasons: Winter and Road Construction was right on the mark.
Jays Roundup - Itchy Trigger Finger but a Stable Turntable | 9 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
_Mosely - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 10:08 AM EDT (#41518) #
Goin' coast to coast watching all the girlys shaking!

No Sleep till Brooklyn! by the Beastie's of course.
_Moffatt - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 10:48 AM EDT (#41519) #
Good work Mosely!

Lately the Song of the Day has been whatever I've heard on the drive to work. A great song that put me in a good mood despite the August slowdowns.

100 million points for you and a picture

_braden - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 11:38 AM EDT (#41520) #
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/minors/hotsheet2004.html
Our very own Gustavo Chacin is #12 on the BA Prospect Hot Sheet. Aside from Vermilyea, I think Chacin is the only Jay to reach the top 20 this year. COMN.
_R Billie - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 11:38 AM EDT (#41521) #
If Lilly is frustrated with his command and going into deep counts then I have one piece of advice for him that I think I've given before. Stop throwing the curveball so much when your control with it has always been terrible. Throw more changeups. I think the changeup is his best pitch and he just doesn't use it nearly enough, especially when he gets ahead and has a chance to finish the at bat early.

I'm thinking of last night when he had Millar down 1-2 in the count and then for some reason tried to throw two straight curveballs which missed the strikezone and put him in deep trouble with runners on and a full count. He then threw a fastball which was fouled off and then FINALLY threw a changeup that got the strikeout. Maybe he could have gotten the strikeout four pitches earlier if he didn't think of it as a last resort. It's his curveball that he should consider a last resort.
_Ryan01 - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 12:52 PM EDT (#41522) #
I'm not 100% sure but I think Josh Banks cracked the top 20 earlier this year braden.

As for Arnold, it's hard to say what his future is. A move to the pen seems sensible but then Sidney Ponson has been pitching with a partial tear in his labrum for years.
Mike Green - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 03:20 PM EDT (#41523) #
http://bradbury.sewanee.edu/Balltypes.pdf
COMN for a fascinating study on batted ball types (line drives, fly balls and ground balls) on pitching results. The bottom line is that line drive percentage globally does exert a significant effect on pitching results, but at a much lower level than the three true outcomes- walks, strikeouts and home runs allowed. For individual pitchers, (Glendon Rusch, are you reading this?) line drive percentage might be very important in understanding results.

The study was done by the author of a blog called Sabernomics. Sounds like Moffatt territory to me.
Craig B - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 03:47 PM EDT (#41524) #
That study is interesting, and the most interesting thing for me is that BB, HR, and K rates are not related to BABIP variance, as I was nearly sure they would do. In other words, in the most blatantly basic form:

in general good pitchers aren't any better than poor pitchers at preventing hit on balls in play, or vice versa.

Some pitchers are better than others, but apparently it's independent of whether they are otherwise good or bad pitchers.
Craig B - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 03:51 PM EDT (#41525) #
Oh! Yes! I forgot. This means that a new and more accurate DIPS should be capable of being constructed if you have, and want to use, LD% in the calculation.

Next step is to move onward from DER, and back the team LD% out of the calculation. The big challenge, though, in all this is figuring out a way of accurately measuring LD% in the first place. Determining batted ball type is not easy (it's easy to define, you do it using physical factors; but it's not easy for an observer to see) and much "LD" determination is bound to be self-fulfilling prophecy, where hits are called LD and outs FB.
Mike Green - Wednesday, August 18 2004 @ 04:10 PM EDT (#41526) #
Yup, Craig. That is the upshot. A more accurate DIPS that'll be much better for Glendon Rusch and his ilk and a little better for most pitchers.

You can define "line drives" pretty objectively with a stop watch and a zone chart. You'd first have to set some standards for contact to ground or glove. I don't think anyone is doing this yet.

Incidentally, one weakness of the study is that it uses IF/Flyball ratio, rather than absolute no. of popups/9IP. Pop-ups are turned into outs at almost the rate that strikeouts are, and it would be a shocker if a pitcher who gets an abnormally high number of popups (e.g. a knuckleballer) doesn't have performance better than would be projected by the three true outcomes.
Jays Roundup - Itchy Trigger Finger but a Stable Turntable | 9 comments | Create New Account
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