«

»

Mar 29

Opening Day Countdown: NINE

Let’s see if I can come up with a post every day of the rest of the offseason.  Today, there are 9 days left until Opening Day on April 6.

9

would be Johnny Giavotella’s jersey number, if he were going to open the season in Kansas City and not Omaha.

In 2011, 9 was also the number of:
-double plays into which Alex Gordon hit
-times Alcides Escobar was caught stealing
-doubles Gio hit in the Majors
-times Mike Aviles – who will be starting for the Red Sox – walked in KC
-hits Jarrod Dyson had in the Majors
-wild pitches Aaron Crow threw
-home runs Louis Coleman surrendered
-starts Robinson Tejeda made for KC
-losses Kyle Davies racked up to accompany his one win
-runs, all earned, given up by Jesse Chavez
-batters Kelvin Herrera faced in the Majors

None of these are particularly meaningful numbers, without context. For example, an uninitiated soul might think that Herrera must not be very good, if all the MLB experience he got was nine little batters’ worth. But considering that he made it all the way up there from single-A at the start of the year, those nine batters are a pretty amazing accomplishment.

Or Crow’s 9 wild pitches. That doesn’t seem like many. Plenty of guys throw that many or more wild pitches! Except the ten other pitchers (min 60 IP) who threw 9 wild pitches faced way more batters. Crow faced 266 batters, and the next-closest TBF is 591. So maybe Crow is vastly wilder than he should be. But then, there are still other bits of context to consider. Who were Crow’s catchers compared to the other guys on that list? And on and on.

This deep into Spring Training, we’re at the point of near-insanity, trying to unpack as much meaning as we can from the inherently flawed and tiny samples in front of us. As the team makes its final roster decisions, it’s harder to keep looking at the bigger picture.

But I suppose, with the Giavotella situation, there is no bigger picture. We’re stuck with Yunichrisky Getzencourt.  The small picture looks as bleak as the big one.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Please consider supporting my writing and photography by doing your Amazon shopping through my affiliate link. (Explanation here.)

Related posts:

  1. Opening Day Countdown: 19 and 18
  2. Opening Day Countdown: 48
  3. Opening Day Countdown: 16 and 15

1 comment

  1. JT

    What are your thoughts on the long term solution to second? Yuni and Getz aren’t the answer and the team isn’t high on Giavotella. Colon?

Comments have been disabled.

site tracking with Asynchronous Google Analytics plugin for Multisite by WordPress Expert at Web Design Jakarta.