Quote:
Originally Posted by Laz
Chen,frenchy and Hos have all turned to shit this year
still not a clutch gene to be found on the team ... although Moose looks like he might be building towards it. Brox gets it done in clutch time but only after an 'almost disaster' every time.
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Clutch?
Clutch?
Clutch?
Most overrated and overused phrase in baseball. But if you want to talk close and late situations, Butler, Moose and even Yunicorn have all been pretty good (defined by hitting at normal ability or better in those situations).
Hosmer had an OK June (even from a power perspective - 3 HR and 6 2B is not great but is OK) and has been OK in July in a small sample size.
I see that his approach has changed and improved drastically from the bad days in April and May. He's being much more selective, taking better pitches, and swinging at pitches he can drive effectively. He also is getting into better counts, which is going to lead to more success.
He's walking 40 percent more often than a year ago (good). He's striking out about 1 percent less often. He just had terrible luck to start the year and fell into an awful slump.
I'm encouraged by what we see from Hos and think his second half is going to be really strong.
As for Frenchy... I expected some regression from him, but not this much. He's the worst everyday player in MLB. And it seems like they're FINALLY seeing that (dropping him in the lineup - though they need to drop him one more spot).
Chen is interesting. He's actually striking out more hitters and walking fewer than the past two seasons, when he was a very solid 3/4 type starter. He's only giving up one more hit per game. His FIP is right in line with where it's been the past two years. The only major thing is that his BABIP - which has usually been below league average throughout his career - and his strand rate, which is about 10 percent lower.
You can look at that two ways. You can look at it as Chen having bad luck with strand rates and his BABIP normalizing (which leads to the conclusion this is the real Bruce Chen). Or you can look at it as a trend that is likely to reverse at some point (and he'll return to production similar to 2010 and 2011).
Personally, I think it's a combination of some bad luck AND Yost leaving him out there too long in a few situations (recent game against Minnesota, he gave up 4 runs in 2/3 in the 6th inning, and similar things have happened a few times earlier in the year).
That's a product, though, of the dogshit performance of the rest of the starting rotation. In some of those cases, they've NEEDED more innings from Chen to rest the pen.