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Tito Tells My Statistics to Shut Up

OK, so much for the jackrabbit start angle for this season.

The following pitching line suggests we'll be throwing out a few more pennant fever angles in Boston in 2011.

GS IP H ER BB K WHIP ERA
12 63 70 47 30 38 1.58 6.71

As I'll bet some have guessed, that's the total pitching line for the Red Sox starting rotation. It is beyond dreadful, especially considering it includes one shutout win and one 1-0 loss. Daisuke Matsuzaka and John Lackey have gotten most of the abuse for this catastrophic overture, but Clay Buchholz's individual stats are not just the rotation's median, they're damn close to its atrocious average, too.

If those numbers don't stop resembling the chart for petroleum futures prices, nothing else that happens to the Red Sox will matter much. Carl Crawford can hit .400 for a month instead of .150. Adrian Gonzalez can hit a home run every three games. And the score will still be something like 5-4 in the fifth, night after night.

When applied to starting pitchers, the word "stopper" works both ways.

Unless this changes, nothing else much

posted by Michael Gee @ 7:45 AM