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Tuesday, October 09, 2007 |
Joe Sheehan On The Reasons The Angels Lost
At Baseball Prospectus (emphasis all mine):
Brian Runge had a huge strike zone yesterday, and both Jered Weaver and Curt Schilling took advantage of it. Schilling has good control to begin with, and if you give him an extra couple of inches down and to the outside, he becomes essentially unhittable. The bigger zone helped Weaver’s big breaking stuff, enabling him to catch corners that might not have been there on a different day. Runge, as much as anyone else, was responsible for yesterday’s game being 2-0 into the eighth. I’m left feeling like the home plate umpires are exerting too large an influence on the game. A large strike zone is better than a random one, to be sure, but not as good as a rulebook strike zone. Calling strikes on pitches down and off the plate does little more than move games along; if umpires were to call the high strike—which has made an inconsistent appearance at odd times—while maintaining lateral integrity, they’d be closer to the book zone, and a better game.The Angels’ hitters in the fifth slot of the lineup in this series were Maicer Izturis and Kendry Morales. That’s just not going to be good enough, and before you point to the absence of Gary Matthews Jr., note that Matthews wasn’t any better than those guys this season: .252/.323/.419, which is what happens when your batting average floats back down to its career levels. Matthews’ 2005 and 2007 seasons are completely indistinguishable from one another; he got to be a free agent after 2006. Ah, serendipity. Four years and $40 million left on that deal, folks. It’s OK, though; he’s just 33.
Labels: angels, postseason, sweep
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