Ennder

Nobody said its Ned's fault if we lose here, but he HAS to pinch hit for Mench against righties. Mench is one of the worst hitters in baseball against righties, there is absolutely no reason not to do it late in the game. This is a mistake he makes over and over and he needs to realize that Mench just cannot hit righties at all.

Even if he doesn't want to use Jenkins there is no reason not to pinch hit Gross for him.

Mench has a.588 OPS against righties this season so it technically could be worse, they could have pinch hit Sheets for him I guess.

I was coming here to post the same thing. Mench is borderline useless vs lefties but he is completely worthless against righties, he can't even manage a .600 OPS against them and since he refuses to take a walk thats a SLG heavy .580 OPS its even worse than it looks.

Ok Ned, please pinch hit for Mench to lead off the inning. edit: darn he's letting mench hit vs the righties, this is one of the worst hitters in baseball in this situation.

Sucks that Turnbow blew the lead but to be fair if Hall makes a good throw this is a tie game still, if Hall just doesn't make a throw its still a tie game as well. If the offense could score some runs off a terrible starting pitcher we are probably still ahead. You can't just blame one guy for a baseball game.

I wish all teams we faced ran the bases like the Royals.

McGowan loses the no no in the top of the 9th. Good AB by Weeks with mediocre results.

Dustin McGowan has done something I'm not supposed to talk about through 8 innings if anyone is interested in seeing what happens.

Come on Gallardo, make them pay for that IBB.

kind of glad they are giving fielder a day off. He's going to make the all star game so he doesn't get that 3 day break and I'm guessing he'll be in the home run derby etc as well.

Once his BABIP falls back to normal Bush will be just fine, case in point he has a 3.80 ERA and .630 OPS against in the past 4 starts and is looking good again tonight. Also if you are going to second guess things I'd say Bush/Gross were as valuable as Overbay last year and Overbay is hurt this year so its pretty much worked out regardless. Edit : Of course my post seems to be cursing him this inning :P.

Wish we had Gwynn starting instead of Hart... In good news to most people, the Yankees just lost in the 13th to the Giants.

Remember when we only scored runs on HR's, I like this much better.

Actually his BABIP shows it quite clearly but I know some people don't like a purely statistical approach, and like I said these things happen to all pitchers but Bush has gotten more than his fair share of them so far this season. You cannot honnstly believe that every single pitcher has exactly the same number of defensive miscues as every other pitcher every single year. Some pitchers are going to catch breaks, some are going to get bad luck and over a small sample there is no way its going to be even. A pitcher can't choose when he makes a poor pitch, sometimes its with a runner on sometimes its with 2 outs and nobody on, he can't choose when a hitter is going to hit a good pitch, he can't control whether the ball is right at the SS or a half inch out of the SS's reach, there are a ton of events largely out of his control in this sport when you are only looking at a small sample of data. As for Vargas vs Bush to me its a no brainer, Vargas struggles to go 5 IP and is a constant drain on the bullpen, I'll take my chances with Bush fixing his BABIP any day of the week.

Um what? Hardy is already out of the game, A double Switch with Jenkins means you have to take another position player out somewhere, who the heck would you take out? The only player that makes any sense at all is Hart and it saves you exactly 1 position in the batting order. I'd rather have Hart in the lineup late in the game than Jenkins. I know people like to complain but it just gets ridiculous when you second guess every single move made in a close game.

There are stats that show a correlation from year to year and stats that do not, the ones that do not I tend to think of as luck. BABIP, HR/FB, LOB% vary a lot from year to year for most pitchers. When one of those stats its way outside its career value I think of it as most likely luck. When a stat like K/9, BB/9, GB% is outside its norm I think something has changed with the pitcher because those stats are generally pretty steady year to year. Dave Bush has 6.26 K/9 for his career, 6.64/9 this year. 1.85 BB/9 for his career, 1.79 BB/9 this year. 45.2% GB for his career, 44.9% GB for this year. All of his stats that tend to correlate from year to year are at or better than his career numbers. BABIP is .331 compared to a .294 career line, LOB% is 61.1% compared to a 67.6% career line (this is low which indicates he does have a long term problem with it). 10.5% HR/FB vs 11.1% career line. If you adjust these stats to career norms his WHIP and ERA look a lot like his career values. Basically Bush has given up a lot more hits than you'd expect because of his BABIP and he's let in a few more than you'd expect even for him. To me it just screams luck, pitchers that have stats like this almost always regress towards their career norms. If even one of his peripheral stats was off base I could see it being a mechanical issue etc but the only thing out of whack is a stat that pitchers seem to not have a lot of control over. He is missing as many bats as normal, he's hitting the strike zone as much as normal, he's not giving up more flyballs than normal, just more balls are finding holes this season. Using a scouting based approach I've seen with my own eyes that he's given up a ton of little bloop hits, misplayed balls that didn't go as errors, etc and I think they easily explain most of the struggles. Hall doesn't muff the double opening day and Bush gives up 3-4 fewer ER's, Bard gets his check swing called a strike and he gives up 4 fewer in SD, the bullpen stops a couple runs in the two early season games he was pulled with 2-3 runners on instead of letting them all in its a little better. The texas game saw two bloop singles, a bunt for a hit force him out etc. These things happen to every pitcher but it seems to be an epidemic in Bush's games this season and I highly doubt it keeps up.

I didn't say it overrides it, it proves that he is a skilled enough pitcher to be successful at the major league level. He might have a mechanical issue, he might even have a mental issue, he might just have had bad luck, but given the sample sizes you have to go under the assumption that if something is wrong its something that can be fixed. In Bush's case we know that bad luck has played a part in his ERA this season just from watching the games. Twice now Hall as messed up plays in center that lead to big innings, once Bard had a check swing call blown which kept the inning going and led to a grand slam. The relievers seem to let in most of the runs he leaves on. His last bad game was derailed by a couple little bloop singles and a bunt hit. Whether its bad luck or him having mental issues after goofy plays I dunno. Bill Hall was lost at the plate for over 2 months and just suddenly something clicked and now he is fine, baseball is a funny game like that.

Bush hasn't pitched poorly this year though, not only is it reacting to a small sample its reacting to a poor choice in metrics. He very well may be struggling in the stretch and of course they should do what they can to get his mechanics fixed, but I'd say his previous 500+ IP sample shows that he is capable of pitching from the stretch at the major league level.

Bush goes almost an inning deeper into games on average and has a more proven track record than Vargas, I know which one I'd send to the pen if one ends up there.

I've been visiting a lot of fan forums lately and every single one of them complains about how the manager uses the bullpen... so it is no longer going to bother me when people complain about Yost. Fans will simply never be happy.

I could see Gallardo replacing Vargas in our rotation and it wouldn't bother me as long as they were very careful with his usage. Replacing Bush would rub me the wrong way since he's probably been the 2nd or 3rd best starter on the team this season.

Bush does lead the team in K's...he's pitched into the 8th four times this year and pitched at least 6 innings in 9 of 14 starts with only one start going less than 5. Vargas has never made it past 6 IP, he's pitched 6 innings in 6 of 12 starts with 2 starts going less than 5. Gallardo looking very good since the first inning, I'm pretty impressed by him so far which is going to make this whole starting rotation question a tricky one.

I doubt it, Vargas would go to the pen if either of them does. He's proven he can't go deep into games at all and Bush has pitched as well as he has. But I guess thats a discussion for another thread, heh.

17 pitches, 69 total. With a pretty weak bottom of the order coming up I'd say he has a good shot at 6 IP.