Making a special weekend appearance in place of Pepper Moffatt today, I decided to tape yesterday's game and replay it a few times to see what I could do. The results may bore you, so read on!
That didn't even feel like an interleague game, to be honest. Washington doesn't register on my Radar of National League teams yet.
First of all, Doc's "Rob Chart":
Once the third inning was over, Halladay never looked back. He didn't give up any runs, though, and that's why his Game Score hung around 50 throughout the first three frames despite all those hits and walks.
Some other data I got from the videotape follows...oh, and thanks to my remote control for its rewind and fast-forward buttons. Daewoo, you're the greatest.
Once, in Moneyball, there was a list of all the batters in a particular game and the percentage of pitches swung at outside the strike zone for each one. Now, this is only one game, but here are those results:
Batter Total Swung % Hinske 9 0 0 Huckaby 2 0 0 Adams 7 1 14 Rios 6 1 17 Hillenbrand 6 1 17 Hill 5 1 20 Catalanotto 4 1 25 Hudson 7 2 29 Wells 3 1 33
Eric Hinske had a nice day, evidenced not only by his homerun (DUDE!), but by his not swinging at any bad pitches. I wouldn't take Huckaby's numbers seriously (well, I wouldn't take any of these seriously, but that's another matter) because he only saw six pitches in the entire game. That brings me to the next table:
Batter P/PA Hinske 4.50 Adams 3.50 Rios 3.50 Hudson 3.50 Hill 3.00 Hillenbrand 2.75 Catalanotto 2.75 Wells 2.25 Huckaby 2.00
Well, what do you know? Hinske shows up at the top again. Huckaby and Wells are, naturally, at the bottom.
From hitting to pitching, let's look at Roy Halladay's "other" numbers throughout his start, minus the first inning (I forgot to tape the top of the first, so you only get six of his seven innings in this analysis...deal with it), and all these numbers are in minutes and seconds:
Inn per Batter per Pitch 2 01:51 00:26 3 01:28 00:22 4 01:21 00:14 5 00:48 00:18 6 00:56 00:17 7 00:52 00:17
Do you need any more evidence of Doc being a robot? He had a disgustingly consistent 18, 17 and 17 seconds per pitch in his good innings there. Standard deviation of 0.5773. Maybe that's all you need to determine if Halladay had a good inning -- forget hits, walks and runs, he just needs to be under a minute per batter faced. Scott Schoeneweis was also under three minutes when he faced three batters in the eighth, as was Justin Speier -- barely -- with 2:56 against Jose Guillen, Nick Johnson and Vinny Castilla.
At the risk of making a statistically unfounded conclusion, I'd say if a pitcher is mowing down batters in less than a minute per, he's got something good going on. A pitcher can give up a bunch of moonshots in a short amount of time, but even so, the time it takes to jog around the bases would push it up over a minute.
Using the Minute Rule works, or you can measure Halladay's frequency of sinkers thrown. In his good innings (4, 5, 6, 7) he threw them at least half the time. The 2nd and 3rd? 46% and 35% respectively.
This doesn't fit in with any of those numbers, but Orlando Hudson made it from home to third in just over 12 seconds when he tripled in the seventh. Is that above average, good, below average? (I'm looking at you, Mr. Dudek.)
And this doesn't fit in with any type of number, be it real or complex, positive or negative, but Geddy Lee was sitting right behind home plate, as he often does. In the top of the sixth, Castilla fouled one right back off the screen and everyone reacted as if the ball was going to hit them. Everyone, that is, except Geddy Lee. He knew the screen was there and visibly ridiculed the person sitting to his left for flinching. You're a true baseball fan, Geddy.
If you were watching on TV, you might have noticed a man in the camera bay during an ad for today's Photo Day (less than two hours to go if you want some pictures, so get cracking). Jamie Campbell sure noticed it after the fact, though he didn't say anything at the time on the air. (Call it pulling "a Warren Sawkiw.") This photographer was featured on screen for twelve seconds -- exactly the same time as the O-Dog's triple -- and it was none other than our own Named For Hank. No doubt, he was getting some good footage for future Photos of The Day, and we all know that having more subjects in Photo of the Day is a Good Thing. You're not allowed to say why, though -- that might ruin the whole thing, which is as awe-inspiring as Harvey's is disgusting.
And now, time for two Jamie Campbell moments from the game. Well, one that was duplicated. He seems to be nostalgic for the 1970s. He said the following sentence twice: "If you (1) in the 70's, you certainly (2)."
First time: 1) Grew up; 2) Listened to Rush
Second time: 1) Were a Blue Jays fan; 2) Remember Victor Cruz
That really has nothing to do with anything, but when a play-by-play man uses the same sentence structure twice within 45 minutes, my warning bell goes off. Just kidding, Jamie.
Scouring the photos from yesterday, looking for something interesting, I came across Juan Marichal throwing out the first pitch in San Francisco. He hasn't lost a step from his playing days, really:
And finally, the greatest moment around the majors yesterday belonged to Dae-Sung Koo.
This video will explain the whole thing (click on "Top Play"). "For me to do something that outrageous," utilityman Chris Woodward said, "I'd have to pitch a perfect game -- and catch it, too."
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20050521204354643