Comments on: Historically Bad Playoff Rotations

By: n/a

n/a — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:13:32 +0000

Its a bit late but I decided to look at overall pitching stats to see if this pitching staff is as bad as assumed think that one has to look at thier offense and errors if the Phillies have a particularly good offense then they can stand up to having subpar pitching, fortunately for them thier pitching has actually been consistantly bad(only gave up more than 7 runs 5 times) so its not completely outside of thier offensive capability to have a winning record with an offense that is averaging 5.55 runs per game and averageing about 5.06 runs against. in the last month the phillies have been relatively decent at pitching with a team era of 4.44 and thats probably closer to what we should expect out of this team and it should be remembered that the philies werent known for thier pitching last year with the exceptions of Hamels and Lidge, neither of whom were exactly untouchable.

By: Custom Building Products

Custom Building Products — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:48:40 +0000

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By: The 1975 Red Sox Rotation

The 1975 Red Sox Rotation — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:33:56 +0000

We weren’t bad, we just played in the Coors FIeld of the 1975 American League.

By: Eric Seidman

Eric Seidman — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:59:13 +0000

Right, and I specifically mentioned this in the post in that it wasn’t as if these guys pitched 30+ games each. The fact still remains that, at various times, these guys started for the Cardinals and combined for 96 of their 162 starts (Carpenter and Suppan had 64 between them and the other two were Brad Thompson and someone else).

Regardless of whether or not they formed a stalwart rotation for the whole year, the Cardinals made the playoffs while giving 96 starts to pitchers with below average numbers.

By: WY

WY — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:31:34 +0000

About the 2006 Cardinals, I knew they would be mentioned as soon as I saw the topic. And those pitchers were pretty terrible, but as some of the other posters have mentioned, it’s not as if they ran all five of those starters out there during the same point in the season. Reyes and Weaver basically replaced Ponson (who was decent for about a month or so until the wheels inevitably fell off) and Mulder, although it was a little more complicated than that. Mulder was also decent until he had a string of hideous outings. Marquis had two games where he had to absorb 12-run beatings to save the bullpen. And Weaver put it together in the last month of the season after having a bad year.

Anyhow … it is funny that they were the team to win the WS (not the ’04 or ’05 team). But it’s not fair to say that they had no business being in the World Series, since they beat the teams that were in front of them (w/o home field advantage). And Suppan did deserve the MVP on the basis of his performance in that series (not the rest of his career). 15 IP, 1 ER? He was good in that series. Not 4 year/$40 million good, but still good.

By: Kincaid

Kincaid — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:44:43 +0000

That’s why I would rather do away with the postseason and go back to just the pennant winners playing in the WS. But, to be fair, they also had no business not being in the WS the year before when they Astros went instead after finishing 11 games behind St. Louis for the division.

Suppan had actually been pitching great for the whole second half of the year, though. Other pitchers like Weaver and Reyes were more of a surprise at that point. It was also the first time in months that the team had been healthy, and the team that went through the playoffs looked a lot more like the team that had won 100 games each of the past 2 years and went 34-19 through the first two months of the season than the team that had floundered through the second half of the year.

By: MPC

MPC — Sat, 09 May 2009 20:09:05 +0000

Their pitchers got hot during the postseason. Jeff Suppan, MVP of the NLCS? Ugh. That team had no business being in the WS.

By: Kincaid

Kincaid — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:51:37 +0000

The 2006 Cardinals definitely stuck out when I was looking for bad rotations. As a Cardinal fan, I remember them running one guy after another out there on the mound that year, and none of them faring well. They did at least have Carpenter, though, who was second in the NL in ERA and first in WHIP that year, and Suppan made 2 of the 3 starters with 30 starts (also the only ones with 20 starts) at least decent. I was trying to stick with teams that were universally bad, or as close to it as I could find, in the rotation when I picked the Rangers and Sox teams (I couldn’t find any recent teams where every regular starter had a worse ERA than average) and also had relatively poor K:BB ratios and FIPs to keep with the spirit of the Phillies’ current rotation, so I passed over some worse overall staffs like the Cardinals who had one legitimate stud.

Looking at the teams the Cardinals had from 2004-2006, it is pretty remarkable that the 2006 team was the one to win it all.

By: Kincaid

Kincaid — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:28:26 +0000

The point is more to look at teams that held up through a season and actually got to the playoffs riding bad starting pitching. What they did in the playoffs isn’t as important as far as this discussion is concerned as whether they were able to stay in first or win the Wild Card with their pitching.

By: VoiceOfUnreason

VoiceOfUnreason — Sat, 09 May 2009 03:33:38 +0000

Is that really the right collection of pitchers? “Historically Bad Playoff Rotations” seems like it should differ from “Playoff Rotations Cobbled Together from a Really Bad Pool”. If you want playoff pitchers, doncha kinda gotta look at who pitched in the playoffs?