Saturday night’s game, where we got great starting pitching and scored one run, only to lose in extras after the opponents tied it late, was sadly familiar. It brought out twitter and gamethread comments like this:
Wow Paxton really did take Felix's start
— Chris (again) (@30AcreFortress) June 12, 2016
I couldn’t help thinking back to a Felix start almost exactly two months earlier. On April 10th, Felix shut the A’s out for 7 innings while the Mariners scored one run. Just like on Saturday, the relievers gave up one solo home run late and another in extras. Let’s compare the WPA charts.
Not exactly the same, but there’s an eerie echo. In both games the M’s had a man in scoring position in the final inning. In April, Seager doubled with nobody out, but Cruz and Cano didn’t advance him, and Dae-Ho Lee struck out to end it. I was at the game, and as Dae-Ho struck out on three pitches I thought "I can’t imagine a guy with a huge swing like that will consistently hit MLB pitching." I have no imagination. On Saturday Kyle flew out with a man on second even as we all hoped for a base hit.
Here are the starting pitcher lines:
| Name | IP | TBF | H | HR | ER | BB | SO | FIP | WPA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Felix Hernandez | 7.0 | 26 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 1.11 | 0.43 |
| James Paxton | 6.1 | 24 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 1.85 | 0.39 |
A pretty brilliant start by Felix even though his velocity was down. Paxton didn’t quite match Felix’s start, but it’s a close facsimile.
In April, the bullpen home runs were given up by Peralta and Vincent, with Cishek pitching a scoreless 9th. Last night the victims were Cishek and Montgomery and every M’s fan everywhere.
They say that those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it. If you do remember history, it still repeats, but you get to feel the pain both in memory and in the repetition. Might as well forget.
GOMS.