2011 MLB Playoffs: congrats St. Louis

[Urban Cohorts]

Did you watch him play or did you just look up his stats? There is a difference. I watched this guy a lot and was not impressed at all. He gave up as many HR/ER as he did in Baltimore in 31 less innings! That is insanely bad! And when we needed him the most he was nothing short of terrible. It doesn't matter to me your k/9 ratio or bb/k ratio if you are giving up runs. Brendan Morrow is one of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball but always has an era in the upper 4's.

IMO there really isn't a difference between watching a guy and analyzing his stats UNLESS you watch him the whole season (did you watch him in BAL?) and notice some sort of change in mechanics or pitch selection. I understand he gave up more ER, but that was largely linked to the increased amount of HRs he gave up. Lets take a look at the breakdown for all of those ER:

8/3 @ DET - 1 HR to Raburn in the 8th when Tex was already losing - 1 ER
8/10 vs SEA - Blew the game got a Loss - 1 ER
8/17 @ LAA- 1 HR to Kendrick - 1 ER - Got the Hold, Texas won
8/20 @ CWS - 0.2 IP - Blew the game got a Loss - 1 ER
8/27 vs LAA - 1 HR to Kenrick (again), 1 ER from a Triple - Texas would have lost regardless
8/31 vs TAM - 1 HR to Damon - Texas would have lost regardless
9/11 vs OAK - 1HR to Sogard(?) when Texas was leading 8-0

So he gave up at least 1 ER in 7 of 22 appearances, most of which came from Solo HRs. And of those 7 games, he only blew the game twice. All of the other instances where he gave up an ER were non-factors. So he messed up in 2 of 22 appearances. In the 20 other appearances, he got 9 Holds, 1 Win, and didn't give up a game changing run. Not terrible considering he appeared in an excessively high amount of games compared to anything in the past as a RP.

The Morrow comparison holds no weight, because A- he is a SP and B- he doesn't have nearly as good a BB:K ratio has Uehara.

You can speculate all you want about Uehara, but the fact is that Lowe BLEW a world series game and the third catcher was a non-factor.

[mweir145]

Koji Uehara is a great reliever, Mark Lowe is a bad reliever. The Rangers made a mistake in leaving Koji off in favor of a scrub and it came back to bite them in Game 6.

[Neato Torpedo]

Did you watch him play or did you just look up his stats? There is a difference. I watched this guy a lot and was not impressed at all. He gave up as many HR/ER as he did in Baltimore in 31 less innings! That is insanely bad! And when we needed him the most he was nothing short of terrible. It doesn't matter to me your k/9 ratio or bb/k ratio if you are giving up runs. Brendan Morrow is one of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball but always has an era in the upper 4's.

Striking guys out and not walking guys doesn't help limit runs?

[J35J]

Take it easy on the Texas fan...I'd be pretty irrational right about now as well.

[BitterDodgerFan]

even madison would shake his head at this

[Bwanna]

Did you watch him play or did you just look up his stats? There is a difference. I watched this guy a lot and was not impressed at all. He gave up as many HR/ER as he did in Baltimore in 31 less innings! That is insanely bad! And when we needed him the most he was nothing short of terrible. It doesn't matter to me your k/9 ratio or bb/k ratio if you are giving up runs. Brendan Morrow is one of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball but always has an era in the upper 4's.

Striking guys out and not walking guys doesn't help limit runs?

Apparently this theory (walks not correlating to runs scored) is a common one in Texas...

"I don't care how many guys I walk. It's about how many runs I give up."

http://www.newbergreport.com/article.asp?articleid=2454

I saw this post-game interview and just smh...