3-0 Count

May 24, 2006

–On May 7th I wrote about how big of an advantage home teams have in extra inning games.  At that point the home teams were at 16-8 in such games.  I thought I would just give a quick update on those stats:  Home teams are 11-6 in extra inning games since May 7th and are now at 27-14 on the season.  In the last 2+ weeks, three times the road team scored in extras only to succumb to the home team in the bottom of the inning. 

–Another little nugget has always piqued my interest.  Seemingly every single time the count is 3-0 on a batter the next pitch is a strike right down the middle.  I am curious to know the percentage of strikes thrown on 3-0 counts, so I went through all 13 games from Monday to see.  On 40 occasions the count ran to 3-0.  27 times the next pitch was a strike (67.5%).  Out of those 27 times, 5 of them were pitches in which the batter swung at.  Every once in a while I will go through a whole days games and see if this percentage is fairly consistent.

–Albert Pujols is an absolute machine.  He slugged his 23rd HR in the 1st inning last night and almost hit another one later on (warning track).  He also has 57 RBI’s which is just ridiculous.  He has 14 more RBI than second place in the Major Leagues (Jim Thome/Lance Berkman).  Pujols is on pace for an insane 84 HR and 207 RBI.  While that is essentially impossible one has to root for Albert to break the old RBI record of 191 by Hack Wilson in 1931.  Stop pitching to this guy people, he will BURN you every single time he steps to the plate.

–Did anyone see the home run hit by Jose Reyes last night to tie the game in the eighth inning?  Obviously Reyes doesn’t have a ton of power but he has got to be stronger than most people think for golfing that ball out of the park.  The beautiful home run extended the game into extra innings and the Mets took the game in the 16th on Carlos Beltran’s walk-off HR (another home team winning an extra innings game).

–The Royals dropped their 11th straight game (check out my blog entry from yesterday) and they are now 10-33.  They hit 4 homers and held a 5-3 lead in the eighth innings that was promptly blown by Elmer Dessens who gave up 4 runs in 1/3 of an inning. 

–The Angels are a somewhat surprising 18-28 but received some much-needed offensive help when they called up hitting extraordinaire Kendry Morales.  The 22 year old Cuban star promptly delivered with 3 hits including a homer in his major league debut.  The switch hitter also made a terrific play late in the game to help preserve the win he helped get with his hitting.  This team is absolutely loaded with young talent (SS Brandon Wood, 2B Howie Kendrick, 1B/DH Morales, 2B/SS Erick Aybar, C Jeff Mathis, P Jered Weaver, P Nick Adenhart) and will improve this season especially when ace Bartolo Colon comes back from injury.

Written by mlblogselisbaseballbanter Posted in Dailies