hope dan scotto noted jim edmonds' two dingers last night. a self-described hall-of-fame snob who writes for SB Nation sabr-site Beyond the Boxscore, scotto evaluates edmonds' case for the hall of fame and finds it surprisingly persuasive. about flippin' time somebody noticed, say a lot of stlouisans. dan at getupbaby has been beating that drum for over a year; a quick scan of his archives turned up two posts -- here and here -- and i know he's got others, i just can't find the damn links. help me, danup -- post the links in a comment, or a diary, or at your site . . .
Update [2005-6-25 18:13:5 by lboros]: here are a couple more links to get up baby's review of edmonds' HOF credentials:
this one
that one
no comment from scotto on the hall-worthiness of so taguchi, who also popped two taters yest'day.
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studes had a graph at hardball times this week illustrating the run distribution of the chicago white sox -- ie, the percentage of games in which they scored 2 runs, 3 runs, 4 runs, etc. the point being that the sox offense has been efficient as hell, rarely getting shut down and rarely scoring meaningless runs in blowout wins (although they did just that in a 12-2 victory on friday). i got curious and tossed together a similar graph real quick-like for the cardinals --
no surprises: the cards are held to 2 or 3 runs far less often than avg, score 4 to 6 runs more often than avg, and score 7 and 8 runs more than twice as often as the avg team. indeed, the cards' 7- and 8-run frequency is about equal to the avg team's 2- to 3-run frequency -- and vice versa.
also of interest: the cards convert low-run games into wins more often than the average team. data:
| runs scored | mlb wpct. | stl wpct. | stl record | exp record | diff'nce |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | .000 | .000 | 0-3 | 0-3 | 0 |
| 1 | .078 | .167 | 1-5 | 0-6 | +1 |
| 2 | .243 | .400 | 2-3 | 1-4 | +1 |
| 3 | .322 | .500 | 3-3 | 2-4 | +1 |
| 4 | .494 | .455 | 5-6 | 5-6 | 0 |
| 5 | .606 | .667 | 6-3 | 6-3 | 0 |
| 6 | .700 | .875 | 7-1 | 6-2 | +1 |
to bottom-line this, a team with the cards' run distribution could expect to have an overall record of 42-31; stl has beat that by four games. about three weeks back i noted that the team had played an inordinate amount of 1- and 2-run games and won about two-thirds of them -- which suggests that the cards, like the sox, have made their runs count. and more to the point, the cardinal pitching staff has made low run totals stand up more often -- twice as often, to be exact -- than the avg staff would.
bear that in mind next time some know-it-all dismisses the stl pitchers' w-l records as the mere product of high run support. . . . . .
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please check out the suppan diary posted by sir vlciv -- he's launched an interesting query into whether larussa's a little slow with the hook, and we need two or three volunteers to help us gather a little data.