I'm not going to take issue with that. But I will take issue with the blurb written about the team. In particular, this sentence:
The staff ace (Wandy Rodriguez) has a losing record for his career and an ERA over 4.00.
While technically correct, it is very misleading. As true Astros fans know, Wandy had a very shaky start to his career. However, if you take the last four seasons, you see that Wandy is in the top 20 in ERA (3.40) among pitchers with at least 600 innings. That ranks him above Justin Verlander, Roy Oswalt, and Yovanni Gallardo over the same time period. Using the same criteria Wandy's 15th in K/9 (8.25), tied with Felix Hernandez. He's top 25 in K/BB (2.74). Top 30 in Win Probability Added (WPA). And Wandy has a winning record over that same four year period (45-42) despite pitching on teams that were a combined 63 games under .500.
The worst part about the quote that set me off this afternoon? It was written by an Astros blogger, who should have known better. Et tu?
5 comments:
I tried to click on the blog's link from ESPN and got nowhere. Probably a stroke of luck.
Besides the ignorance of the Wandy remark, I also take exception with the "don't even have much upside" comment. Basically, people know a lot less than they think they do regarding the upside of young players.
The future for players is inherently hard to predict, even for knowledgable scouts, not to mention the casual blogger.
ESPN is the worldwide leader in crappy reporting. Seriously, their "journalism" is a joke- they throw mud at a wall until some of it sticks.
I really wish another sports station would come along (and I don't mean someone like a Foxpsports Southwest who's production system sometimes rivals that of a high school), but a bonafide, legitimate, sports reporting site with accurate information.
That would be a nice change....
Anon #2 Good news Fox is looking into a new national sports Network, NBC has started theirs (used to be Versus) and ABC, i believe, has one in the works as well. So the days of ESPN ruling all sports coverage may be numbered
Anon #3 - ABC is ESPN.
Damn, bring it, Trostel! Nice work.
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