Jaime Garcia is no road warrior

Last night, Cardinals starter Jaime Garcia pitched three innings and allowed seven hits and four runs at the Padres clobbered the Cards, 11-3. Garcia has not had a good season, standing now at 4-7 with a 4.41 ERA and a 1.469 WHIP.

But this season, Garcia has been particularly toxic on the road. He has pitched 48 innings at home and 48 innings on the road, after that there is no similarity between Garcia's performances at home and on the road.

Take a look:

Jaime Garcia	Home	Away
Games Started	7	9
Innings pitched	48.0	48.0
Wins	2	2
Losses	2	5
W-L %	.500	.286
ERA	2.63	6.19
Hits	52	63
Runs	18	33
Earned Runs	14	33
Home Runs	0	6
Walks	9	17
Wild Pitches	3	6
WHIP	1.271	1.667
SO/9	7.9	6.6
SO/BB	4.67	2.06

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Check out the dramatic differences in Garcia's home and road graphics:

Garcia at home:

Garcia on the road:

Here are the numbers that extrapolate what you see above. 

Jaime Garcia	Home	Away
At Bats	181	194
Hits	52	63
Runs	18	33
Doubles	12	12
Triples	1	2
Homers	0	6
Walks	9	17
Strikeouts	42	35
Batting average against	.287	.325
On-Base percentage	.318	.372
Slugging	.365	.490
OPS	.682	.862

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: Generated 9/11/2012.

 

If the Cardinals reach the postseason, you can be sure that Mike Methany will be adjusting his rotation to allow Garcia hear the hometown cheers.  

Umpire Review: Opening Weekend (Part One)

Throughout the 2012 season we will take a look at the accuracy of MLB umpires by comparing their ball/strike calls to PitchFX data. With every team now having completed at least one series, let's take a look at the numbers.

First up, let's see which umpires expanded their strike zones during Opening Weekend:

All MLB Games through April 8, 2012

Ed Rapuano manned home plate duties in the Wednseday night MLB opener between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Miami Marlins.  He seemed to be giving pitchers some help as 16 of the 94 pitches taken out of the strike zone by batters were called strikes. As a point of comparison, league average called strike rate on pitches out of the zone last season was 9.7%.

Again, Rapuano's expanded zone on Wednesday was a product of 16 erroneous strikes. Over the remainder of the season, he'll likely move closer to his average from last season (9.3%).

137 Taken Pitches / 49 Total Called Strikes / 16 Strikes Outside the ZoneFrom the above graphic, you can see that Rapuano was favoring the outside strike for both lefties and righties. Five of those strikes came against Marlins batters, while eleven came against Cardinals hitters. It didn't seem to affect the defending champions too much as they still managed to win the game 4-1.

Next up, we'll take a look at missed strike calls within the PitchFX strike zone....

Carp Goes on Short Rest

With the World Series on the line, Chris Carpenter takes the ball on short rest tonight for the St. Louis Cardinals. Carp, who gave up four runs in three innings while pitching on short rest against the Phillies in Game Two of the NLDS, gets the nod over a fully-rested Edwin Jackson and Kyle Lohse.

Starting pitchers typically perform worse on three days' rest. Baseball-Reference keeps track of a stat called tOPS+, which compares a pitcher's on-base-plus-slugging percentage in a particular situation to his overall OPS. One-hundred is average, while anything over 100 means the pitcher did worse in that situation than he did overall. With the exception of 2009, starters have lost a good bit of their effectiveness when going on short rest:

2008: 115 tOPS+ (15 percent worse on three days' rest than in other situations)

2009: 94 tOPS+

2010: 113 tOPS+

2011: 121 tOPS+

How have pitchers fared in the playoffs on short rest? Not well. Since 2008, there have been 10 starts made on three days' rest. The pitchers lasted slightly more than 5.1 innings per start, with a solid strikeout total (7.6 per nine innings pitched) but also plenty of walks (3.8 per nine) and lots of home runs allowed (1.55 HR/9). Those starters had a collective 5.79 ERA.

The sample size is awfully small (a total of 54.1 innings pitched), but we are talking about some of the best starting pitchers in the game. After all, a manager wouldn't consider putting a pitcher out there on short rest unless he thought that his less-than-optimal-ace would still be better than a well-rested, middle-of-the-pack starter. In recent years, though, those aces have coughed up runs at a Kyle Davies-like clip.

Here's the list of short-rest playoff starters since '08, ranked by Game Score (the average is around 50):

 

Is 70-80 percent of vintage Chris Carpenter better than Edwin Jackson at 100 percent? We'll find out tonight, though it's entirely possible that Carp is only the nominal starter, going once through the Rangers' lineup, and Jackson sees a few innings of action as well. Given how starters tend to fare worse in the mid-to-late innings -- compared to their first time through the lineup, their opponent OPS climbs 29 points the second time through and 74 points when facing batters a third time -- being quick to the bullpen is a smart strategy. 

If Game Seven is even one percent as thriling as Game Six, we'll all be in for a treat.