My Attempt to Heal the Offense

by jubjub on Aug 17, 2005 6:18 AM PDT Comment 8 comments

On August 6th, I posted a diary about the A's August Offensive Woes. And then they went out and scored 27 runs in two games. So, in an attempt to reignite the offense, I've posted the same diary, but with updated August stats.

Please, do your best to tell me what an idiot I am, how the sample size is too small, and how we just have to stay positive. The more comments, the better the odds they'll break out of the slump. I'll do my part by eating an entire bucket of chicken before today's game, ala Wade Boggs.

Here's a month-by-month breakdown of our Runs and OPS (AL rank in parenthesis):

April Runs: 89 (12) OPS: .657 (14)
May Runs: 112 (12) OPS: .672 (13)
June Runs: 148 (4) OPS: .820 (4)
July Runs: 155 (1) OPS: .809 (3)
August Runs: 69 (7) OPS: .743 (10)
August1 Runs: 42 (14)

August1=If all runs scored by all teams on August 6th and 7th are removed. Yes, I think it's kind of bad science to remove those, but the drop in rank is clearly significant and August 6th and 7th are clearly outliers. The only bright spot is that the White Sox have only scored 43 runs in the same game set.

Our August OPS has dipped significantly. The main problem? No one is on fire leading this offense. It was Crosby in June. Chavez in early July. Johnson in late July. Who's going to step up?

At least our pitching staff has stayed hot:

April ERA: 3.65 (2) OPSA: .684 (3)
May ERA: 5.43 (13) OPSA: .784 (12)
June ERA: 2.83 (1) OPSA: .629 (1)
July ERA: 3.66 (1) OPSA: .705 (2)
August ERA: 3.73 (4) OPSA: .689 (1)

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Go A's?????

Kiko Streetscherer...is where it ends!!!

by jrwolf on Aug 17, 2005 6:57 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

On stats

The sample size is way too small. You can't just wantonly exclude games that don't support your thesis. Especially when the sample size is so small, you can't go making it selectively smaller. Go eat a bucket of idiots, you chicken!

How's that?

Actually, the interesting thing is that because the pitching is still hot, August should more closely resemble April than the month that shall not be named. April, while not tremendous, was not as bad...hopefully this stretch won't last a whole month though.

"Everyone was saying, 'Swisher, you suck!' and I was like, 'OK, we've established that.' "

by oblique on Aug 17, 2005 7:46 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs

That's the spirit

I think we should award points based on the best slams.

Signatures? We don't need no stinking signatures.

by jubjub on Aug 17, 2005 7:51 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Points!

And then we can redeem the points for buckets of chicken! But I always lose slam contests anyway. And I'm vegetarian. Shoot, I got too excited again.

"Everyone was saying, 'Swisher, you suck!' and I was like, 'OK, we've established that.' "

by oblique on Aug 17, 2005 8:03 AM PDT up reply actions 0 recs

Seeing as how we're eliminating outliers...

We should eliminate this last Chen game. Otherwise we've been shut down by great pitching. Santana, Silva, and Lopez on his game. Those are quality arms. Historically, this is our hot month, that is with a bigger sample size. This is all too small a sample size, one bad game against a bad pitcher. 3 good games against 3 great pitchers. Good pitching shuts down good hitting.
There are more good hitters than good hurlers, so as long as pitching is good, we'll be fine.

"The difference between Jose Canseco and Kobe Bryant is that Kobe doesn't believe in giving his teammates any shots." -Jay Leno

by vignette17 on Aug 17, 2005 8:10 AM PDT reply actions 0 recs