A Few Quick Links
I have a couple of posts nearly done, but nothing ready to go, and didn’t want to leave you guys without some content this morning, so let’s just turn on the link machine.
First off, here’s the audio of my interview with Chris Egan and Brock Huard from yesterday.
If you aren’t tired of listening to me talk, I also was a guest on the Bloomberg Sports podcast – the conversation is a mix of Mariners stuff and FanGraphs stuff, but if you can’t get enough fast talking, there you go.
Speaking of FanGraphs, R.J. Anderson stole some of my thunder on a post I’ve been working on, refuting the idea that the M’s pitching and defense formula can’t work. The Padres are doing just fine with exactly the same plan as the M’s – minimal offense but fantastic run prevention. Despite the M’s struggles so far, do not make the mistake of believing that a team has to have some big thumping bats in order to win. If Chone Figgins, Jose Lopez, and Casey Kotchman were hitting at their expected levels, we’d be staring at a wildly different record.
Good point Dave! I second that motion!
Of course it doesn’t hurt to have A-Gon in the middle of the lineup.
Dave’s interview with Brock and Chris starts at 19:15.
I’d even go so far to say if either Figgins or Lopez were hitting at their expected levels, the Ms would be right in the thick of it now.
I don’t blame the season on either or both of them, but just one of them could have made a huge difference, especially in a lot of those 1-run games.
You could also say the same for the rampaging bad luck in those couple of sweeps. Especially in Chicago. The bullpen imploded / was misused at exactly the wrong time.
There’s no reason the formula can’t work. It just has a much smaller margin for error than a typical formula of above average offense and above average pitching. Otherwise we’d have far more than just a handful of examples (2001 Diamondbacks, 2005 Astros, the ’85 World Series teams) of teams that successfully won pennants with a below average offense and great pitching/defense.