Baseball is Poop

Boy Did They Blow That One
An incredible botched rundown in August 15's Royals-Rangers game. Follow this carefully:
With Tony Pena on first and one out David DeJesus singled to right.
The rightfielder Nelson Cruz hit the cutoff man Michael Young who threw to first and got DeJesus in a rundown. The first baseman Jarrod Saltalamacchia, threw to Ian Kinsler who chased DeJesus back to first but didn't tag him because he instead threw home to get Pena coming down the line. Gerald Laird took the throw and tagged Pena. A 9-6-3-4-2 out.





But the rundown wasn't over. DeJesus was trying to take second. Laird's throw to second was wild and DeJesus came all the way around to score.

One Bad Game Is All It Takes
Coming into August 16th Jeremy Affeldt of the Rockies and Kevin Cameron of the Padres had given up 17 earned runs in 91 2/3 innings combined so far this season for an ERA of 1.67 (0.80 for Cameron and 2.51 for Affeldt). Then in one fell swoop during the 5th and 6th innings they allowed 8 earned runs and retired 1 batter, for an ERA of 216.00. That raised their collective ERA to 2.45. Their new individual ERAs are 1.39 for Cameron and 3.47 for Affeldt.

Life is Not Fair
We all know that won-loss records for pitchers are largely a product of the quality of the team they play on. But rarely do you see large disparities between pitchers on the same team. But the San Francisco Giants have Matt Cain who has 3.77 ERA. That is less than half a run higher than his teammate Noah Lowry's 3.28. Cain is 4-13 and Lowry is 13-7. That's a difference of .415 in winning percentage. The problem doesn't lie with Lowry, his record is appropriate to his performance, he's lost every game he was supposed to lose and won the games he was supposed to win. In his last 10 victories he's allowed more than 2 runs only once. And in 3 of his losses he allowed 3 or fewer earned runs.
Then you look at Cain. He has 7 no decisions, all 7 were winnable, and 4 of them were excellent starts.
Over a 9 start stretch in May and June Cain went 0-6 with a 3.56 ERA. In two consecutive games he allowed 2 runs in 15 innings and lost 2-0 and 1-0.
In his last 4 starts in April he went 1-1 with a 0.93 ERA. Over that span he allowed 7 hits in 29 innings. In two of the games he allowed 2 hits and 1 run in 13 innings and got a loss and a no decision. Incredible bad luck for Cain. He's still got a bright future, as things like this tend to turn around.

There's No Place Like Home
Brewers closer Francisco Cordero has a 0.58 ERA and 23 saves at home where opponents are batting only .087 against him. But he is allowing about 4 walks per 9 innings.
On the road he is 0-4 with only 13 saves, but even worse he has a 7.64 ERA. Hitters are tattooing him to a .368 clip, but he's only allowing 1.5 walks per 9 innings.