Hmm, I knew there was something I was forgetting to do...

I apologize for the long absence. Most of us will at some point probably have to worry about their parents dying. That's just a fact of life. But at age 31, I've lost both of mine in the span of 13 months. And although neither deaths were exactly sudden or unexpected, it's still a bit of a shock. So anyway, my recent absence from the blog has been due to taking care of my mom and then attending her funeral last week. And there are some estate issues in the coming weeks? months? that I need to devote some time to as well.

And on the other side of the emotional rollercoaster, I'm getting married on Saturday. I'm trying to squeeze 'devotion to the minor leagues' into the vows, but I'm not sure that's going to work.

So those season-ending recaps I promised eons ago are still in a temporary hold pattern. The rest of September is pretty much shot, but as I mentioned to someone in a e-mail yesterday, I figure this way you'll at least have something to read during the off-season....

 
Blogger has been up and down today, so let's see if this goes through...

I don't have the data readily available to be able to compute park factors for each minor-league team because you need fairly detailed home/road splits for both the Braves AND their opponents. A very quick and dirty way (more dirtier than quick) is to just look at how the Braves' teams performed in their own stadia against what they did elsewhere. It's not nearly as accurate, but it's what I have.

So here's an interesting test of your park factor knowledge. If a team's pitchers compiled a 2.56 ERA at home and a 4.16 ERA on the road, you would generally say that their home park favors pitchers.

And if a team's batters hit 20 points higher at home than on the road, you might be inclined to say that said team plays in a hitter's park, although that's obviously not as conclusive.

But what if both of these groups were from the same team?

Welcome to Danville!

       AVG  OBP  SLG | 2B/G  3B/G  HR/G | ERA

Home  .253 .322 .344   1.75  0.25  0.22   2.56

Road  .232 .305 .327   1.48  0.18  0.42   4.16

As you can see, the difference in AVG is only part of the story. They also got on-base more often and hit for more power (although not HRs) while at home.

So what does that mean in the grand scheme of things?

Well, maybe that huge split for ERA is because of one or two guys' clunkers.

Here's a breakdown of Danville's primary starters:

Name    Home ERA   Road ERA

Collins   1.99      4.91

James     1.80      0.90

Morton    3.86      5.34

Nieves    3.60      5.40

Russell   1.96      7.36

White     3.00      2.63

So you've got two pitchers who were slightly better on the road, two whose road ERAs were less than 2 runs higher, and two others who were VASTLY better at home. Smells like a pitcher's park to me.

Do we need to discount the performances of some of their pitchers because of it? Should Danville's hitters get a slight bump in our evaluations? Who exactly am I asking these questions to?

 
I had planned to do a write-up on Rome's 8-2 victory last night in the first game of the playoffs. But David Dawson at the Rome News-Tribune not only beat me to it (as he of course should), but he did a fantastic job including every factoid available (Brian McCann's HR drought, Anthony Lerew's 7 innings of dominance). All of which leaves me feeling somewhat useless... [sniff]

Read the article - if only to see quotes like this from manager Rocket Wheeler: “Hickory knows we’re coming after their butts.”

Game 2 is Friday at Hickory.

 
I've kept you waiting long enough. Here are the MLBBies for the last four days of the season:

MLBBies for August 29
Ardley Jansen - 2-for-3, HR, BB
Anthony Lerew - 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 K

MLBBies for August 30
Donzell McDonald - 2-for-4, 2B, HR, BB
Matt Wright - 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 3 BB, 4 K

MLBBies for August 31
Wes Timmons - 2-for-5, HR
Adam Wainwright - 6 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 7 K

MLBBies for September 1
Wilson Betemit - 2-for-4, 2 HRs
Dan Meyer - 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 4 K

And that brings us to the moment that we've all been waiting for - the crowning of the MLBBiest players this year (well, since June 7th).

Jeff Francoeur and Keith Eichas finished tied with 4 awards. Darnit, that wasn't supposed to happen. Luckily, I had a tie-breaker system in place. Well, ok, I just thought it up, but here it goes. We'll look at their stats for those 4 MLBBie-winning performances and give the final award to the best line.

Name       AVG   OBP   SLG   2B  3B  HR  BB

Francoeur .643  .684  1.500   2   2   2   3

Eichas    .545  .545  1.273   4   0   4   0

Francouer, it is!

Matt Wright takes home the giant pitching trophy with his 6 titles.

Wright actually won the daily award in each of his last four starts which is pretty darn amazing. And none of them were flukes either. Here's his combined line for those four games: 27 IP, 15 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 6 BB, 33 K. Tally those numbers up and you get an 0.67 ERA, 0.78 WHIP, 11.0 K/9 and 5.5 K/BB.

Here's what I hope to do over the next 3-4 days:

An analysis of each team including fun little facts like... The team with the best walk-rate also had the lowest batting average;

Player Awards, such as "Best Performance by a Teenager" and "Pitcher with the Stinkiest Control" and

A very-early-and-probably-not-final 2004 Top Prospects List.

- Michael, 8:14 PM

 
Rosters expanded to 40 yesterday, so let me get all these transactions out of the way. Jesse Garcia and Damon Hollins were both added to the 40-man, requiring the removal of one player. Joe Dawley drew the short straw. Interestingly, Hollins was then placed on the major-league DL which makes me think he's probably not going to see any action this month, and he'll just be used as a pawn to circumvent the postseason roster rules.

Other call-ups include Johnny Estrada and Ryan Langerhans. Both Estrada and Garcia were actually added on Sunday due to some fancy version of musical chairs, and both will be available for the postseason.

Also, Roberto Hernandez and Julio Franco were activated from the DL, although neither of them might be ready for action just yet. Franco's hand is still bothering him, and Hernandez still sucks.

Some recaps of this weekend's action later...