Reflections on the Weekend

Random bits on the past three games ...

Strange to feel good after being outscored 19-3. But that approach worked for the 1960 Pirates ...

If there is such a thing as a "good" 9-0 loss, Friday night was it. The way Willis was pitching, we lose that game 1-0 even if the pitchers don't melt down. The other 8 runs are essentially irrelvant ...

Saturday's game was another treat, like our first win. Guillen with another "right back at you" dinger, and then he slides like Paolo Maldini trying to keep a ball from going into touch to hold Pierre to a double. And with ERV Scoring, we can know that that play saved the Nats 0.25 runs. Guillen's RV line that night: 1.53 runs, with 1.28 batting. He also impresses with his cryptic taunt "LoDuca is LoDuca, Guillen is Guillen" remark after the game.

Speaking of LoDuca, another neat thing about ERV Scoring is that you can saddle him with a value for his premature home run trot that prevented him from going to second on a ball off the wall -- it cost the Marlins 0.09 runs ...

Sunday's game was looking to be another classic until dam burst in the eighth. But like Friday, we were facing a good pitcher who had his stuff, so a 8-0 loss is the same as a 1-0 loss. I thought Johnson's attempt to score in the first was a good gamble. It took a nice play by all three Marlins involved to just get him. And as the game went on, it looked even better, as runs appeared to be at a real premium, until 8th ...

As suggested here and elsewhere, Guzman began batting eighth on Saturday, which is good, but only a partial solution. Apparently tired of killing us with his bat, he turned to his glove, where his error cost the Nats 1.25 runs according to ERV. Here's his season RV line through Sunday:

Batting: -5.99 runs
Fielding: -1.25 runs
Running: -0.44 runs
Total: -7.67 runs

For comparison, he has cost the Nats more runs than the players with the next three lowest RV totals (-2.34, -1.94 and -1.89) combined! Somewhat surprisingly, the -2.34 is Vidro.

On the other side of the ERV ledger, Guillen has now passed Wilkerson for the Total RV lead, thanks to his defense. Wilkerson still leads in batting alone. Only four Nats have a positive RV, reflecting the few runs scored by the Nats in the past three games, none of which met the league average of 4.84 runs per game per team.