Jose de Jesus Ortiz is the Chronicle’s beat writer for the Stros, but curiously, the newspaper allows Ortiz to provide subjective blather about the club and its players rather than objective analysis. Get a load of Ortiz’s latest on the reeling Stros:
The pitching staff has actually been good, considering Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte are gone and Jason Jennings has been on the disabled list most of the season. Pitching coach Dave Wallace has aided the development of rookie Chris Sampson and Wandy Rodriguez, who have stepped up and helped ace Roy Oswalt lead the rotation while veteran Woody Williams tries to get back on track and Jennings works his injured right elbow back into shape.
“The pitching staff has actually been good?” Here are the facts.
The Stros pitching staff overall has allowed 15 more runs than a merely average National League pitching staff would have given up through 48 games of the season, which rates 11th among the 16 National League pitching staffs. Two fifths of the rotation — Woody Williams (-11 RSAA) and Matt Albers (-9 RSAA) have been among the worst starting pitchers in the National League this season, while another starter — Wandy Rodriguez (-2 RSAA this season) — has been one of the worst starting pitchers in the National League (-38 RSAA) over the past two and a third seasons. In just the past week, reliever Rick White has given up 9 more runs in his appearances than an average NL pitcher would have given up and fellow reliever Brian Moehler has surrendered 8 more runs than an average NL pitcher would have given up pitching the same number of innings. I wonder if Ortiz thinks that Stros pitching coach Dave Wallace “has aided the development” of those pitchers?
Meanwhile, in the same article, Ortiz bashes the Stros anemic hitters, which is certainly legitimate criticism. However, although those hitters have generated 16 fewer runs than a lineup of average NL hitters would have created using the same number of outs, than output is only one run less than the -15 RSAA of the pitching staff. So, using objective criteria, the Stros pitching staff overall has been every bit as bad as the Stros hitters so far this season, which is the point that Ortiz should be making.
Adding this latest Ortiz column to a couple of dubious previous ones (here and here), a good case can be made that Ortiz is having every bit as bad a season writing about the Stros as the Stros are having on the field.
I think you are being somewhat misleading here. Before the Texas series, they had an ERA of 3.80 and then the wheels came off. In the last 9 games they have an ERA of 7.20. Before the Texas series they had allowed 165 runs in 40 games and since the Texas series they have allowed 66 in just 9 games. So, at least until about 9 games ago, the pitching has been pretty good.
I don’t know about that, Gary. If you check my first two periodic reviews of the Stros this season (here and here), the pitching staff has wandered between 9th and 13th among National League staffs in regard to their runs saved against average. Other than Oswalt, only one Stros pitcher (Sampson) has even a 4 RSAA and only three others have a positive RSAA (Lidge, Wheeler and Borkowski at 2 RSAA). That’s a significantly poorer performance level than the recent Stros’ staffs that have carried the club over the past several seasons and not one that appears likely to climb even to an average level among NL clubs.
So, at least until about 9 games ago, the pitching has been pretty good.
It’s hard to evaluate that statement objectively because of the different metric being used. It seems to me to make that statement as a response to Kirkendall’s assessment, you’d need to look at RSAA over the time period you’ve identified as critical.
Inasmuch as inducing outs and not giving up runs are the most important attributes of pitching, RSAA is one of the best metrics by which to evaluate pitching. I check the Stros’ statistics almost daily and the Stros staff’s RSAA has been above-average (i.e., greater than 0) only a couple of times this season and, even then, it has been barely above-average. Inasmuch as most folks equate “good” with well above-average, Ortiz’s assessment of the pitching staff is without objective basis. The bottom line is that, outside of Oswalt, the rest of the staff has been barely above-average or below-average this season and, overall, just as bad as the hitting.
At one point in the season the Astros had a team ERA of 3.80. I don’t have a way of figuring out where that would have ranked them on that day, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that would have put them in the top 5 of the NL. Last year the Astros were second in the league with an ERA of 4.08. So 3.80 is good by today’s standards.
It’s all kind of a moot point anyway if the hitting doesn’t get better. I thought they were an 80-82 team before the season started and it looks like I was too optimistic.