The Orioles invade Toronto this weekend looking to narrow the 11.5-game gap between them and fourth place.
There's no game from yesterday to talk about. So here's a random, largely pointless idea I had late last night - charts showing the WPA contributions of each AL team's batters, starting pitchers, and relievers. (What is WPA?) Again, this is not a very good predictor of future performance. It has a few warts, most notably that pitchers receive all of the credit or blame for how their defenders play. But for hindsight, as a measure of performance adjusted for clutchiness, it's good. It can't let you say for sure, "Our bullpen sucks," because leverage is very important to WPA and a few clutch performances can skew it considerably. What it can let you say is, "Our bullpen is absolutely killing us." Which is where these graphs come in...
What I noticed:
- The Blue Jays' offense is your WPA leader;
- The Rays' pitching staff has been a grizzly bear with flamethrower arms;
- This hasn't exactly been a banner year for offense so far;
- The Rays, Red Sox and Rangers are the only teams with positive WPA from all three groups. The Yankees and Blue Jays are very close;
- When you factor in their home stadium and defense, Seattle's relievers have sucked terribly;
- I did not see the Orioles' offense struggling this much;
- I thought the Texas pitchers' respectable performance was a big deal, but on closer inspection, their starters actually ended up with +0.67 WPA last year. I had no idea. (Previous six years: -4.80, -11.80, -1.72, -2.85, -3.80, -8.45. Okay, maybe it's a big deal after all);
- The AL Central doesn't hit much. It's a good place to be if you want to contend for pitching hardware..
Tonight, Shaun Marcum and his 1.03 WPA take on veteran righty Kevin Millwood and the last-place Orioles. Millwood, traditionally a breaking-ball specialist, is throwing 7% changeups this year. Millwood was signed to eat innings, and he is doing a fantastic job of that, averaging 6.8 innings a start with a 3.71 ERA. Nevertheless, he has yet to collect his first Pitcher Win of the year. Baltimore's hitters have had considerable success against Marcum, so maybe tonight is the night. Vegas doesn't think so, though. Jays -190, first pitch is 7:07.
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20100528042308289