Game 120 Open Thread: August 17, 2005

mulder               webb
13-6, 4.10          10-8, 3.78

don't expect many baseballs to soar at busch this evening. 'zona starter brandon webb leads all big-league starting pitchers in groundout-flyout ratio, at 3.58; stl hurler mark mulder is 5th in mlb (and 3d in the nl) at 2.50. as long as i have the page in front of me, let me note that two cardinal relievers (tavarez and eldred) are both getting more than 2 groundouts per flyout (2.18 and 2.12, respectively), and two other members of the staff (carp and brad thompson) are just below that threshold, at 1.97 and 1.96. alleged sinkerball specialist jason marquis has a go/ao ratio of 1.61, just ahead of soupy suppan (1.60); matt morris gets 1.47 groundouts for ev'y flyout.

baseball prospectus, grokking the stl bench today, asks: "Why isn't Nunez (.306/.373/.413 this year) playing like Abraham Nunez (career .238/.306/.316 in eight erstwhile seasons)?" answer: . . . . . oh hell, click the link and read it for yourself.

hardball times posts this year's win-share leaders by age, a strange but admittedly interesting way to break down the list. st louis does well on the 5s and the 0s -- we have mlb's win-sharingest 25-year-old (pujols), 30-year-old (carp), and 35-year-old (edmonds). so in this respect, "05" is already the cards' year. good omen? . . . . .