One Night Only: Your Entire Weekend, Planned
You know what’s the worst? Thinking! And you know what’s doubly the worst? Having to think even for a second about what games to watch over the weekend.
Well, now — thanks to cutting-edge research (that, and the internet) — you don’t have to.
Hail, nerds! These are your games of the weekend.
Texas at Minnesota | Friday, May 28 | 8:10 pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Rangers: Colby Lewis
57.1 IP, 9.10 K/9, 3.77 BB/9, .263 BABIP, 38.4% GB, 7.9% HR/FB 3.98 xFIP
Twins: Kevin Slowey
49.2 IP, 6.89 K/9, 2.36 BB/9, .350 BABIP, 28.1% GB, 9.6% HR/FB, 4.63xFIP
Watch For
• Colby Lewis. Duh.
• Of 113 qualified pitchers, Kevin Slowey has the absolute lowest groundball rate in the majors. Here are some people who’re happy about that: Ian Kinsler and Vladimir Guerrero and Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz and Justin Smoak.
• Smoak is currently sporting a slash line of .173/.287/.317, but here’s what nerds know: he’s not that bad! Smoak’s BABIP is a paltry .171. StatCorner places his regressed wOBA (wOBAr) at .367.
The Other Reason I’ll Be Watching This
Because my friend Dan, a Twins fan, invited me to.
What You’re Saying to Me
What is that my business?
What I’m Replying Back
Sorry, guy. I just thought it’d be possible to reach out and forge a real human connection. Like in that one movie where two people from totally different worlds — he’s a ruthless entrepreneur, she’s a small-town librarian — forge a real human connection.
If I Had My Druthers
• Americans would stand up and take notice of Justin Smoak.
• Americans, while standing up and noticing Justin Smoak, would resist the urge to call him the Smoak Monster.
• Americans would start being polite, and stop being real.
Houston at Cincinnati | Saturday, May 29 | 7:10 pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Astros: Bud Norris*
43.2 IP, 11.13 K/9, 5.36 BB/9, .400 BABIP, 36.8% GB, 11.4% HR/FB, 3.99 xFIP
Reds: Aaron Harang
58.2 IP, 7.36 K/9, 1.99 BB/9, .353 BABIP, 41.4% GB, 16.9% HR/FB, 3.79 xFIP
Watch For
• Norris and Harang. The pair are currently two of the least lucky pitchers (per ERA-xFIP) in the majors. Norris has a 6.80 ERA; Harang, a 5.98 ERA. Impress your friends and/or standers-by with this knowledge!
• The Reds! They’re good. Offensive Rank (per WAR), 2009: 15th in the NL. Offensive Rank (per WAR), 2010: 5th!
• Jay Bruce regressing real hard back to (and then above) the mean. Bruce, 2009: .221 BABIP, 97 wRC+. Bruce, 2010: .348 BABIP, 127 wRC+.
If I Had My Druthers
• Aaron Harang would stop getting dumped on by Fortune.
• Miguel Cairo would not both start at first base and occupy the most important spot in the batting order.
• The part of the game where Houston’s supposed to bat wouldn’t exist.
*As reader Jason notes in the comments sections, Norris has actually been sent to the DL recently. In his place will be Gustavo Chacin. That’s less interesting than Norris. Sorry, dogggz.
Los Angeles (NL) at Colorado | Sunday, May 30 | 3:10 pm ET
Starting Pitchers
Dodgers: Clayton Kershaw
59.0 IP, 9.61 K/9, 5.03 BB/9, .284 BABIP, 40.1% GB, 4.8% HR/FB, 4.25 xFIP
Rockies: Jhoulys Chacin
32.0 IP, 8.44 K/9, 3.66 BB/9, .249 BABIP, 41.9% GB, 6.7% HR/FB, 3.81 xFIP
Watch For
• Clayton Kershaw. Of starters with more than 20 IP, Kershaw is fourth — behind Tim Lincecum (13.5%), Brandon Morrow (13.0%), and Dan Haren (12.8%) — in swinging strike percentage (11.9%). His fastball, a pitch that league-wide gets swing-and-misses only about 7 percent of the time, is getting whiffs 11.8 percent of the time.
• Jhoulys Chacin can throw the frig out of a baseball and is only 22 years old.
• Chris Iannetta’s back in the majors after hitting .349/.447/.698 in his 70-something Triple-A plate appearances.
More on Kershaw
Matthew Carruth does these cool things for Lookout Landing where he looks at each pitcher’s basic repertoire and then grades it on the 20-80 scouting scale. The grades are determined by league percentiles in swinging strikes (K), strike rate (BB) and ground balls (GB) for each pitch.
Here’s what Kershaw’s looks like:
Pitch % Sp K BB GB FB 71% 94 80 60 60 CB 18% 73 45 20 60 SL 6% 82 65 35 20 Overall -- -- 75 35 50
If I Had My Druthers
• Kershaw would just throw all those fastballs.
• The world would wake up and smell the Chris Iannetta.
• Actually, that’s gross.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
Next up, ‘Your Entire Weekend Planned for Orioles Fans Without MLB.TV.”
I’ll be in the park tonight watching Kevin Slowey spend his allotted 5 innings testing the limits of Target Field’s HR supression power.
I will refer to him as the Smoak Monster, though. 😉
Uh. . .Bud Norris = DL’d. Let’s try this again Carson.
Ack. Yahoo! didn’t tell me! I blame it on them!
Nelson Cruz is likely headed towards the DL (again)…sigh…
The twins game: where Carson is the burger and Dan’s are the bun!
Smoak monster would be one of the coolest active nicknames in baseball (behind Kung Fu Panda, The Machine and, Godzilla).
Chacin better look good against the Dodgers, the Rockies need to play catch up after the team wide slump they suffered.
Am I dumb? Why is Smoak monster clever?
It’s a reference to a ‘character’ on Lost (the TV show that just concluded on ABC)
This was funny. I enjoyed this alot for some reason…
For reason, see first sentence of your comment…
Ubaldo v.s Lincecum isn’t a bad use of a Memorial Day either
” • The part of the game where Houston’s supposed to bat wouldn’t exist.”
Pure awesome.
no weekend is complete without at least one Cubs game (just to watch lou pinella look like he has some combination of suck-induced dementia).
plus, there are better nickmanes in baseball than smoak monster:
nick blackburn – pumpkin tits;
aaran harang – harangutan;
bronson arroyo – arroyo speedwagon;
travis hafner – pronk;
todd helton – toddfather;
felipe lopez – Flop (or F-Lop);
sydney ponson – shrek;
george sherrill – brim reaper (wears his hat brim flat);
travis snider – moonraker;
adam larouche – hot garbage (he stinks);
joakim soria – the mexecutioner;
adam dunn – big dunnkey;
mark reynolds – little dunnkey (a pint-sized, by comparison, adam dunn);
grant balfour – STFD (sit the f*ck down… apparently he yelled that at an opposing hitter after a big strikeout during a playoff game).
those are just my favorites… i’m sure there are some others out there that i’ve never heard that are better (talk about a great blog entry…).
Scott Downs – Snakeface
i enjoyed this a lot. nick blackburn’s nickname: pumpkin tits. does this refer to the color, size or texture of his nipples. for some reason i feel like i need to know this.
http://www.thosegirlsbaseball.com/2009/06/blackburn.html
I haven’t heard of half of those. But having grown up in Columbus I’ve heard Pronk for a long, long time, seems kinda old hat to me which is why I didn’t list it (though I thought about it). I also wasn’t aware that the Todd Father actually stuck outside of the old Rockies commercials (which is why I didn’t list it). I did forget about Mexicutioner though, classic.
I actually went to Wikipedia to check to see if there was anything better than the three I came up with on my own, sadly, the article sucked as many nicknames weren’t listed and most of them were for long retired players.
Another favorite of mine (though not nearly as epic as some that you listed) is Mr Late Night – Seth Smith, for being clutch in the late innings.
STFD is just awesome, gotta be the best of them all.
Death to Flying Things.
Randy Winn DFA- would be fun to look back on the pathetic Cashman roto-fanboys who made up those absurd projections for him this year.
Why would guys who hit fly balls be happy to see a fly ball pitcher? They should want to see a ground ball pitcher so that the errors cancel out and they hit line drives everywhere.
Justin Smoak and Pat Meares. :p
man colby lewis pitched like a foot in that game. 1 K? 6 BBs?
Can we replace that (now) clunker of a Saturday game with a truly interesting pitching matchup of Clay Buchholz vs. Zack Greinke at Fenway? Now that is an interesting game.
can we replace these with Roy Halladay vs. Josh Johnson?
Yeah, I frigged this one up. Although, to be fair, Harang really did pitch well. And Cincy hit well, too.