Bold Prediction: Offense out of the Nine-hole

Today's Bold Prediction:

The starting pitchers in today's Reds-Cardinals game will have more combined hits, runs, and RBI than the first basemen in the starting lineup.

Okay, so this may be a little far-fetched; it's no secret St. Louis Cardinals will have the most special hitter on the planet in the lineup today, and Joey Votto's no slouch either.

But for some reason I think Bronson Arroyo (who homered in his first two starts in 2006) and Brad Penny (who batted over .150 in four of the last five seasons) could really shine in today's game at the Great American Ball Park.

Yesterday's Bold Prediction:
Early on in the season, it's typical to see a manager go to the bullpen after five or six innings regardless of how well the starting pitcher may be doing. There are a few reasons for this. in order to avoid risking injury, it's important not to push a hurler too much as he works on building strength. Also, managers want to give their relief pitchers work, since they need to experience regular live action in order to get a feel for their craft.

Through Day 3 of the baseball season, no starting pitcher had pitcher more than seven innings. I thought that would change yesterday, and it did. In fact, two pitchers recorded at least 22 outs: Luke Hochevar of the Royals (23) and Matt Garza (24). Hochevar was very efficient with his pitches, needing only 89 to get through his workload, while Garza's 114 pitches represent the highest pitch count of any starter in this young season.

2010 Bold Prediction Record: 1-0

Somos Numero Uno!

Thanks to my mom for sharing this article with me. It looks like the Mets opened the season with more foreign-born players than any other team. Cool!

I'm reminded of the neat infographic at Flip Flop Fly Ball charting the growth of the Latin American and Asian population within MLB (and the unsurprising death of the European population).

Random thoughts:

• Both the NY Times article and Craig Robinson's timeline show that Dominican-born players outnumber any other international constituency which reminds me just how much I enjoyed the film Sugar, which you don't have to be a baseball fan to enjoy. I'd say the film was a cross between Maria Full of Grace and The Scout. But, you know, way better than that sounds.

• I'm glad that the Mets have a Canadian on the team. Hopefully the 2010 version of the Mets will be a nicer, friendlier version of the Mets. I plan to celebrate Bay's first homerun as a Met with a Molson, and maybe a hug.

• The NY Times article also notes, "In four of the past five years, the Mets have led the majors with with the most players born elsewhere." I'm willing to bet that the Mets have also led the major with the most injured players born elsewhere, or anywhere, for that matter...

Bold Prediction: Over 21

Here we are, three days into the young season, and no pitcher has recorded more than 21 outs in a game. Eight hurlers have pitched exactly seven innings. They are: Dallas Braden, Mark Buehrle, Scott Feldman, Yovani Gallardo, Roy Halladay, Dan Haren, Tim Lincecum, and Shawn Marcum.

My bold prediction for today is that at least one pitcher will record more than 21 outs. That's right folks, you heard it hear first: At the end of the day we will have a new innings pitched leader in Major League Baseball!

ZWL Tracker: 1-0

One game into the 2010 season, Zito sports a 1-0 record no matter how you slice it, which is good, because most fans still aren't hip to the Zito Win method of performance evaluation. The Giants and their fans might expect Zito to toss six innings of one-run ball every time out, but if last night's success proves to be an aberration, I'll be tracking his ZWL record all season long in this space, and everyone is welcome to enjoy this revisionist exercise along with me!

Introducing The Zito Win

Sometime during the 2008 season, my friend Nick and I were one of many thousands of Bay Area baseball fans horrified, violated, and generally non-plussed by the downright pathetic performance of Giants pitcher Barry Zito.

No matter where you turned, Zito jokes abounded, and with good reason: during a twenty-game stretch the previous season, the lefty had won only three games, and was even relegated to the bullpen one time (albeit, only for an inning). As frustrated as Giants fans had become during the Zito Experience, each poor outing he turned in led to a fresh layer of disappointment. Die-hards cursed the man and even casual fans seemed to pick up on the stench of disaster that accompanied every Zito start.

Meanwhile, more realistic fans like me and Nick began to realize that it was no longer fair to expect Zito to rediscover the magic that led to his then-record $126 million, seven-year payout. The Good Zito wasn't coming back, and if we were going to survive the remaining five-plus years on Bad Zito's contract without suffering massive cranial leakage, we all needed to shift our already-low expectations.

One night at AT&T Park, Nick and I observed the train wreck in person. Trying to scavenge for something constructive, we brainstormed various ways we could help salvage Zito's career by looking at the results of his "performance" from a non-traditional viewpoint. Much in the same that way that a rehabbing ace pitches against collegiate or low-minors batters to build up strength and confidence on his path to recovery, even a pitcher barely hanging on to his job like Zito will look like an All-Star if we lower the bar sufficiently.

Like Alexander Cartwright and Bill James before us, that night we invented the Zito Win.

When trying to evaluate a starting pitcher's success rate, it's not uncommon to look at his win-loss record. It's not a perfect metric by any means, but in Zito's case, through his first season and a half, his W-L record stood at 14-25. This was a terrible record, and certainly reflective of Zito's dismal performance, but somehow it just didn't seem to do him justice, and here's why:

If you listen to baseball broadcasts on TV or on the radio, you'll hear the color commentator celebrate a pitcher because his team has a high winning percentage in games started by that pitcher --- "He gives his team a chance to win every time he goes out." Well, through 2007 and the first part of 2008, Barry Zito certainly hadn't given the Giants a chance to win every night, but when the Giants did win, he must had something to do with it, right?

How to earn a Zito Win, Method #1:
If your team wins and you were the starter, you get the win.

Another expression we've all heard baseball announcers say is that a pitcher's done his job if he "keeps his team in the game." Different teams score different amount of runs, and the Quality Start metric tracks a pitcher's ability to complete six innings while allowing three runs or fewer. Nick and I decided that Zito needed a little more rope than that, though, because he'd been struggling so much. Besides, "quality" isn't an adjective, anyway, so we felt it was okay to re-write the definition a little bit:

How to earn a Zito Win, Method #2:
If you pitch at least give innings, and give up no more than five runs, you get the win.

Barry Zito may not have been performing up to the All-Star standards the Giants were paying him to, but by our Zito Win method, he had a real chance to succeed game in, game out. We figured that if Zito heard about this metric he might feel good about himself and start to turn things around. Maybe he heard us that night, and maybe he didn't. But one thing's for sure: Barry Zito has one heck of a ZW-L record:

	2007	2008	2009	Total
Original WL	11-13	10-17	10-13	31-43
Zito WL	24-9	25-7	27-6	76-22

Even with my terrible HTML layout skills, it's plain to see that we're looking at a pretty special few seasons as as long as we're measuring Zito this way. All of the team's wins became Zito Wins, and many of the other games that were originally no-decisions or losses become Zito Wins as well because of the pitcher's sub-9.00 ERA, or ZERA.

Tonight Barry Zito makes his first start of the season for the Giants, against an Astros lineup that doesn't have a lot of thunder. I think I smell a Zito Win.