Rick Porcello Spotlight Edition

The pitchforks are out and the nihilists are all doing their best Tony Mazz take-down of one Rick Porcello: He of the $20M contract and woebegone 6.08 ERA.  In light of this I decided to get back on the horse and look closer at what has befallen this former 'just on the cusp of stardom' whipper of the pale orb.  In other words, is he unlucky or just plain bad?

A very big thank you to Baseball HQ for the stats. (W)ins, (L)osses, ERA and WHIP are familiar to most readers but I wanted to dig deeper to see if I could find something beyond the 'he's going to ruin any chance for a winning streak' panic button being pressed into submission lately.

Let's start with his luck.  H%, S% and xERA are all a function of luck where H% stands for batted balls landing as hits, S% on the number of runners a pitcher strands on base per outing and xERA incorporating those into is ERA.  His average H% before this year was 31.3 and his average S% was 70.  In other words, more hits are falling and particularly baserunners are scoring this year than he's ever experienced before.

Now lets look at things more in his control: The amount of ground balls, line drives, and fly balls he's been watching over his shoulder, the number of walks per 9 (Ctl), the number of strikeouts to walks (Cmd), his (V)elocity.  It jumps off the page how far his ground ball rate has fallen, and the corresponding rise in fly balls.  This means his career high home run per fly ball (HRF) is hurting him more than ever.  However, his Ctl is right in line with his better years and continuing maturation as a pitcher in terms of limiting walks.  Furthermore his Cmd is even better, a gaudy 3.4, further following a slow and steady rise in his ability to strike guys out.  He's also showing no slippage in his V, another check mark on this half year prelim.

It appears as though those reports of him leaning too hard on his four seam (or straight) fastball are true.  Guys are squaring up that pitch and launching balls into the stratosphere.  But his surface stats are a poor representation of him.  If he can find his two seam (sinking) fastball again and have a little more luck the second half he has a strong possibility of surprising the haters and rising to the occasion.

Until next time,

The SAHD

Deflategate Best Possible News For The Patriots Edition

I've been waiting and waiting and waiting to hear this but the hate apparently is too much fun: Deflategate is the single greatest thing to happen to the Patriots as it pertains to their upcoming match-up with the Seahawks. 

Let's travel back in time to the Spygate era in 2007.  Bill Belichick is fined $500 K and the team is fined $250 K and has to give up a first round draft pick for taping the defensive signals of the New York Jets.  How did we find this out?  First there was Fredo, I mean Eric Mangini, who wanted to shut down the taping against his Jets in week one.  The Pats got whacked by the most upstanding and forthright Commissioner Roger Goodell soon after and pundits and fans went insane.  Despite the fact that it was commonplace to spy on the opposing team in the NFL at the time people were calling for Belichick to be fired and the three Super Bowl wins be vacated and all the same stuff we're hearing now.  I think it's reasonable to assume that if teams admitted to watching the opposition to try and steal signals there were more than a few doing some taping too.  So what happened after?  Here are the scores of the Patriots games immediately following the Spygate punishment:

Week 2 vs Chargers - W 38-14
Week 3 vs Bills - W 38-7
Week 4 vs Bengals W 34-13
Week 5 vs Browns W 34-17
Week 6 vs Cowboys W 48-24
Week 7 vs Dolphins W 49-28
Week 8 vs Redskins W 52-7

The Patriots were decimating the league.  Average margin of victory: 26 points.  It was such dominance that the Pats were blasted for running up the score, as if something so preposterous as worrying about kicking ass has any place on an NFL field.  Unfortunately they ran out of steam at that point.  Even though they went 16-0 in the regular season they were never able to be so laser focused as they were in the immediate aftermath of Spygate.

Now here comes Deflategate.  I don't need to tell you how crazy the Patriots bashing is right now.  And now it's come out that the Colts not only were waiting for it from their game against the Patriots in November but were tipped off by the Ravens before the game too.  As of this writing I don't know the punishment but I'm pretty sure it will be severe.  I mean the NFL has fined Marshawn Lynch barrels of money for simply not talking to the media and making some fashion statements.  But while all this outrage is going on there are very few reasonable voices pointing out that many NFL QBs love messing with their balls.  So lets take a look at the Patriots performance after halftime when the refs replaced the deflated balls:

Second Half - Outscore the Colts 28-0

Look familiar?  Sure it's only one game, but there's nothing that motivates this team more than getting singled out and bashed for something a lot of people in the NFL do.  They get into total kick ass mode.  The second half last weekend was the kickoff for the get out of my way Patriots we know and love here in New England.  I heard an interview with Teddy Bruschi talking about how Rodney Harrison would get himself and his teammates to believe that 'Nobody believes in us' for motivation even though the Pats were favored in a lot of games.  What's going on now is 'Nobody believes in us' on steroids.  Despite all this controversy the Patriots will never be more fully dedicated to their 'Do your job' mantra than right now.  This team is going to come out in the Super Bowl ready for peak performance and the Seahawks have no idea what's coming.

You heard it here first people.  The Patriots are going to romp early 2007 style all over the Seahawks.  Blowout city, get ready for it.

Until next time,

The SAHD

Postscript***After the Patriots pressers and continued hate I feel even stronger about this.  I still don't care whether they did they or didn't they.  In fact the haters can Pretty Hate Machine all over the Patriots till the cows come home, I'm begging them!  Just a couple media notes.  Felger & Mazz un-listenable on this subject.  Same with MFB mostly because of B.  Gresh and Zo too ra-ra, Minihane garbledigook.  All in all I'm very happy I downloaded candycrush for the first time this week because mindless finger wags are more entertaining.