6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog

Jered's a punk, Figgy is a runt
They both went to Cleveland, joined the ice capades
And oh, I dont know why oh, I dont know why
Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah perhaps they'll die, oh yeah
Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah perhaps they'll die, oh yeah

In some ways, yesterday's game and today's game perfectly mirrored each other. Excellent starting pitching, one little hiccup as one team finally saw some daylight after early frustration, and then some blasts to put it away.

Yesterday, Jered Weaver silenced the Indians' thundrous bats, his box score resembling for all the world one of his minor league efforts, save for the two runs scoring. I've already come out predicting a Jeff-ian career for brother Jered, though it's hardly a guarantee or a prediction I endorse heartily; Little Weaver had far better numbers in his college career than Jeff did. On the other hand, his PECOTA card shows him being at most a 20 VORP pitcher at best; most of his baseline plots are down near replacement level.

Of course, a good bit of that low rating comes from his rusty beginnings at Rancho and Arkansas last year; Rich and I saw his forgettable professional debut, and it never really seemed like he did get straightened out at any time in 2005, except maybe on the very last game of the AFL. Those accumulated performances have probably poisoned his comparables list — a short one, as his comparables index is only 20 — including some very dubious pitchers indeed:

• Successes: Two-time All-Star and 1989 Cy Young award winner Mark Davis, who had a long and productive career, mostly out of the bullpen; All-Star Don Wilson, who pitched two no-hitters in his career but committed suicide while he was still a good pitcher.
• Successes, but you'd hope for more: John Patterson, an at-times fantastic pitcher for the Nationals who has trouble staying healthy; 1991 All-Star Scott Sanderson, a chronically-injured starter who was brilliant for a few years, better-than-average for about half of his career, and well-below-average the rest; 19-year-old phenom/flameout Britt Burns, whose career was lost to injuries; Bill Butler, who struck out 156 batters his first season (over 193.1 IP, a 7.25 K/9), but lost his fastball after 1971 and pitched irregularly and with irregular results thereafter.
• Fringe major leaguers/cup of coffee types: John Maine; Dennis Tankersley, Seth Etherton; Ruben Quevedo.
• Chronically injured and/or bad: Dan Meyer (a guy we saw in spring training, he's returned and doing poorly thus far); his number one comp, former Dodger prospect and injury magnet Andrew Brown, who has a 2.40 ERA with AAA Buffalo this season; Ryan Vogelsong.
• Flameouts: Jim Nash, brilliant for one year with the seventh-place Kansas City A's, and never as good again; John Sneed, who never made it to the show; Aaron Myette, who never stuck once he got there; Yankees cup-of-coffee recipient Ryan Bradley.
• Insufficient data: Jason Arnold, a pitcher in the Toronto system; Boof Bonser; Cory Stewart.

A motley bunch, to be sure. Of course, as with all very young players against whom track records are scanty, such stuff becomes nigh well useless. Consider, say Albert Pujols and his 16 similarity index; guys like this are hard to predict, too, and all you know about them is that they can mash, f'r chrissakes. PECOTA will have a tough time sussing out Jered Weaver; he might just be a phenom who sticks, but I'd still tell you to let the kid get a year pitching in the majors before we have even the slightest idea whether he's going to be the next Jeff Weaver, or the next Jim Bunning.

The test of that will come eventually, as he's had two games in which he's had superb defense bail him out; last night's came on a flyball double play in the fourth. It would be interesting, considering the miscues that occurred in today's game — including another misadventure by Vlad — to see how Jered would have handled that.

One other thing that I found intriguing, given Weaver's splits against lefties at AAA (.231/.259/.356 vs. LHB, vs. .196/.239/.333 vs. RHB), is why the Indians didn't have more lefties in their lineup; only Grady Sizemore (leadoff), Travis Hafner (cleanup), and Ben Broussard (6th) were left-handed, but I saw that a lack of a credible left-handed bat on the bench appears to be a frailty of this year's team. That wasn't true, however, of the Orioles, who left Jay Gibbons out of their lineup. I didn't check to see whether he was injured at the time, but I assume that was what was behind it. Update: Duh, he crashed into a wall the night before. Thanks, Rev.

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The offense in both two nights couldn't have been more different, and indeed the Angels' failure to score beyond their sixth-inning, two-run rally today certainly hurt them (though not as much as the eight runs the Tribe put up in the next half frame). Today, Figgins couldn't buy a hit; yesterday, he got a pair of hits and never scored. Kendry Morales continued his descent to about-what-you'd-expect before his first week got you all excited. Dallas McPherson wasn't even starting, not against lefty Carlos Lee, though he did fail to get a hit in his lone late-innings at bat. Robb Quinlan is rapidly proving he can't hit lefties as well as he can't hit righties; it's an equal-opportunity thing, you wouldn't understand.

I've bagged on the Angels for forcing Chone Figgins to the leadoff spot, a drumbeat I started the instant I heard about the Angels' signing of Orlando Cabrera. Chone has been too heavily dependent on batting average in the past to get on base, and as we're seeing to some extent this year, he's not doing it enough at all, walks or no walks, to really cause his baserunning to be much of a threat at all. However, an interesting article from Viva El Birdos came over the transom recently, and unsurprisingly, it's about the lil' shortstop certain parties loved to hate, David Eckstein. (Easily offended grammatical sensibilities warning: Birdos doesn't believe in capitalization; ee cummings could get away with that, but ... dude, c'mon, it's just plain nasty in prose.)

The author makes two important points in a fairly lengthy review of the Cards' leadoff situation: first, Eckstein is not taking walks, instead electing to get on base via hit by pitch; and second, he's not stealing bases. Like, at all (four all year). If that's true, his skills — particularly his speed, something that's crucial to the value he does hold — are due for one hell of a collapse, starting, oh, I'd say around five o'clock tomorrow, Central Time, and I probably owe Bill Stoneman an apology for calling the Cabrera signing dumb.

Friday recap • Saturday recap