Opening Day

A lot of baseball yesterday/last night. I took in the entire Braves/Phillies game as well as parts of a few others and had some thoughts...

• Kelly Johnson’s opening day wasn’t as bad as it looked. The Braves leadoff hitter did strike out twice, but hit the ball hard in the top of the 8th and managed to see 24 pitches in his 5 plate appearances (4.8 pitches/PA). In the field, he showed good range by chasing down a ball in shallow right and handling a slow grounder. The dropped ball in short center clearly should have been an error but, as I’m sure you all know, errors mean little if anything. A side note: Keith Law does a good job of mentioning these botched error calls in his blog (which is consistently outstanding) and lobbying for the abolition of this stat.

• By contrast, Jeff Francoeur’s first game of '07 was just as bad – if not worse – than it looked. The Braves RF swung at 11 of the 16 pitches that were offered to him, and was a good foot away from making contact with a Tom Gordon curve in the 9th.

• Speaking of Gordon, both he and Braves LH reliever Mike Gonzalez illustrated just how valuable it is to be able to come out of the bullpen and get a strike out. Gordon fanned PH Brayan Pena to get out of a bases loaded jam in the ninth, while Gonzalez sat down both Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard on strikes with runners on second and third and no outs in the top of the 7th.

• Phillies starter Brett Meyers threw very well, but did have some issues. His 9 strikeouts (and only 2 walks) in 7 2/3 innings was very encouraging, but he couldn’t reign in his curveball most of the day. There was good break on the pitch, but he kept it up in the zone, as is evidenced by his 9 flyball outs (to 5 groundouts) and 2 HR allowed. Attribute this to opening day, since he is usually has groundball tendencies (although his GB/FB has declined somewhat the past few seasons).

• Ryan Howard had a good game as well, going 2 for 4 with a walk. Nothing spectacular yesterday, I just wanted to say a quick word about his power. His stats obviously tell the story, but it is something totally different to see him live. While living in Richmond, VA in 2005, I got the chance to see him come through and play the Braves AAA team on quite a few occasions, and it was incredible. The power that he has to the opposite field is absolutely unreal. If you haven’t seen him live, I would highly recommend it.

Elsewhere in the majors...

• Despite not throwing particularly well, and looking like he went on the Odalis Perez workout program of eating hotdogs and taking naps, Angels starter John Lackey was able to hold the Rangers to 1 run (unearned) over 5 innings. It’s probably good that he only went 5, though, since it gave manager Mike Scioscia plenty of time to start breaking down Scot Shields. Shields has thrown either the most or second most innings of any AL reliever in the past three seasons…check out his ERA splits by month to see the effects.

• It was good to see Yankee fans boo Alex Rodriguez for a bad first inning of 2007. In the 7th, A-rod singled, stole second, and scored what would prove to be the game winning run (not to mention adding a two run shot in the 8th)…there’s no way he can win.

• I haven’t seen Astros closer Brad Lidge throw yet this year, but reports are that his mechanics are out of whack and he’s having trouble locating. I’m hoping he can recover, because that fastball/slider combo of his circa 2005 is too good to be wasted.

Glavine Impressive, but...

Real quick: we were going to post previews for each of the 6 divisions, but got lazy. Now that the season has started, it seems stupid to post previews, and we’ve abandoned that. So, on to last night’s game…

41 year old Tom Glavine looked good last night in the first game of this 2007 season. The lefty ace threw an efficient 6 innings, averaging only 14.8 pitches per inning and inducing two double play balls among the Cardinals many ground/pop outs throughout the evening. The real story here wasn’t Glavine, though, it was the Cardinals.

First off, let me acknowledge that I am very much aware that this game one of a 162 game season. Nevertheless, Sunday night had to make you uneasy if you’re a Cardinals fan.

The most puzzling event of the evening was the decision to hit Preston Wilson second in the order behind David Eckstein. Now people have different theories regarding how much difference a batting order can make, but I feel safe in saying that placing a guy in the two hole that strikes out ~25% of his trips to the plate and possesses a GB/FB ratio that is reaching towards 2 the past couple of seasons is not a good idea. In fact, in his first AB of the season, Wilson swung at the first pitch he saw, took the second, and then grounded into a double play on the third. He ended the night going 1 for 4 while grounding into the aforementioned double play and striking out twice. Again, I know that this was the first game of the season (and I’m not implying that Wilson will strike out 50% of the time), but it’s probably not going to get much better.

The rest of the Cardinals lineup featured Adam Kennedy (ranked 21st out of 23 second basemen in OPS last season at .718), Yadier Molina (20th out of 21 catchers with over 400 ABs at a .595 OPS), So Taguchi (I hate to pile on after his night in the field, but he has a career SLG. of only .398), Jim Edmonds (the 36 year old won’t be able to bounce back from injuries like he used to), Scott Rolen, David Eckstein, and Albert Pujols. Returning back to Wilson, his OPS of .730 ranked 69th out of 82 outfielders.

I’ll admit, the problems for the Cards were exasperated by the fact that there was a lefty on the mound, as Chris Duncan has obliterated right-handed pitching to the tune of .307/.379/.622. Even so, that’s in only 241 career ABs, and he opens the lineup to problems for late in games when bullpens will bring in lefty specialists to neutralize him in key situations (he may as well not bring a bat to the plate when facing a lefty).

On the plus side, the Cardinals still have Pujols, Rolen (as long as he’s healthy), Edmonds (again, if healthy), and Eckstein (at least he gets on base), and it does help that they play in what is probably the weakest division in baseball. However, it’s pretty tough to score runs when the bottom third of your lineup is made up of automatic outs (just ask the Astros).

A few notes from the game…

• Rolen’s force out of Tom Glavine at second base on Lo Duca’s slow roller in the top of the 3rd further demonstrates his defensive prowess (not that he needed to). Not only in the accurate throw made while charging towards home, but in the fact that he knew a 41 year old pitcher was on the base paths.
• Carlos Delgado’s double, also in the top of the 3rd, was a good show of the big first baseman’s power. Delgado’s weight had shifted over his front half, instead of remaining back, and the left-hander was still able to drive it to the wall in the opposite field.
• Carpenter’s night wasn’t as bad as it looked. The Cardinals ace only allowed 3 flyball outs to his 11 groundouts and used his curve effectively at times to get up 0-1 on hitters. He wasn’t helped by Taguchi running head-long into the left field fence for the Delgado double that he should have probably caught.
• A potential Cardinal rally was killed in the bottom of the third when Carpenter attempted to squeeze Adam Kennedy home and ended up getting the second basemen tagged out. This move was quite confusing to me, since Carpenter strikes out less than 30% of his plate appearances (not to mention Glavine is not a strike out pitcher), and there was no one on first to force a potential double play. LaRussa likely ran his team out of a run there.