TDA Bullpen - Our Writers' Blog

Monday, May 03, 2004

I have a little bit to say about a lot of different topics, so let's get going.

The NL Wild Card

I don't think I appreciated quite how good the "also-rans" in the NL Central were, or quite how bad those of the NL East have turned out to be, at least in the first 25 games or so of the season. I still think the NLWC winner will come from the Central, but the fact that the Mets and the Expos are in the NL East opens the door a little wider for one of the three decent or better teams from the East. And let's not forget LA and San Diego. If LA keeps hitting the way they've started you have to like their chances to win, and possibly run away with, the West, but if the Padres continue to seriously outclass the other three teams in the West the WC could even come from the West, as hard as that was to imagine a month ago.

The Cubs

With today's win to earn a series split in the four games in St. Louis, the Cubs move to 15-10 on the season. They have managed this despite Mark Prior's absence and having only one reliable lefty in the 'pen. Prior just threw a one-inning simulated game, with no adverse effects after working out of the stretch for 15 pitches. In his rehab schedule Prior will increase his workload by an inning in each simulated game, which will be spaced four days apart. Throw in a couple of rehab starts after a few more simulated games and Prior could be back in the lineup sometime around Memorial Day, or maybe a little sooner. Mike Remlinger should also be ready to go in a couple of weeks, and that will help bolster the Cubs' bullpen and take some of the load off of Kent Mercker.

On the offensive side, Todd Walker, Moises Alou, and Aramis Ramirez have all gotten off to great starts. Sammy Sosa and Derek Lee have started off in a characteristically slow manner, but I expect that they will warm up along with the weather. I don't expect Alou to keep up his .700+ SLG or for Ramirez to go at a .600+ pace for too much longer, but as they regress back to their means Sosa and Lee should be in position to pick up some of that slack.

The Twins

I caught yesterday's Twins' game as well as the game on Saturday with the Kingman pre-game episode. The Twins dropped a couple of tough games to the Angels after being tied through seven. The Twins just couldn't match the Francisco Rodriguez-Troy Percival combo that the Angels can field late in tight games.

One interesting thing I noted is that Ron Gardenhire chose to take out both Brad Radke and Johan Santana after seven, even though each guy was a few pitches shy of 100 on their pitch counts for their respective games. Keep in mind that Radke was locked in a 0-0 duel and Santana had righted his ship after a rocky start to be in the middle of a 1-1 game.

This is not headed where you think it is, though. I'm not about to second-guess Gardenhire. He's 199-149 (.572) in his first 2+ seasons with the Twins, so he knows what he's doing. What's going on is that with no reliable fifth starter, Gardenhire is using off days whenever possible to skip the number 5 spot in the rotation. This policy has already meant that about a half start or so extra has piled up on the established quartet of Radke, Santana, Kyle Lohse, and Carlos Silva. The Twins off days today and a week from today mean that the policy could be kept up until May 15 if Gardenhire so chose, and based on the way he handled Radke and Santana I'm guessing he will choose this route. But in the wait for a decent #5 (and the guess here is that Terry Mulholland may get a chance soon while Rick Helling and Joe Mays heal), the top four in the Twins' rotation will basically have piled up an extra start in the first six weeks or so of the season. This extra work shortens the rope a little in any given start, and that may have cost the Twins in their games against the Angels.

Incidentally, the top four in the rotation for the Twins have already started to right the ship. As I mentioned last week, the Twins rotation had performed well below expectations. If you take a look now, things are starting to look up. Carlos Silva went from the mid-4's to almost 4 even. Radke and Santana went from the mid-5's to the mid-4's, and the guess here is that there's more room to improve. Kyle Lohse has gone from the low-8's to the mid-6's, and there's no maybe that things will continue to get better for him. They just need someone, anyone, to fill in that #5 slot in the rotation before the other guys' arms start to fall off.

The Scott Podsednik Watch

In games 20-24 Podsednik didn't even attempt a steal before getting two in the Brewers' 25th game. That puts him on pace for 91 attempts. There's a nice lesson about putting stock in early projections. Just going from 19 games to 25 changes the projection multiplier from 8.5 to 6.5. A few dormant games can have a significant effect on whatever it is you're projecting this early in the season. I wouldn't take anything before the one-quarter (about 40 games) to one-third (54 games) seriously at all, and even then there's more than 100 games remaining in either case.

I do have to say that I think I'm going to have to consider Dave Roberts from the Dodgers to have a shot at a monster steals season. He's a perfect 15-for-15 in steals and has a .380 OBP so far. If he keeps it up, he's in the running. The things about Roberts are that his career OBP is only .338 and he's never played more than 127 games in a season. So even if he keeps up the OBP pace, there's some question as to whether he could make 150 starts. But who knows, maybe we're seeing the start to something that could turn into something similar to Leflore vs. Moreno from 1980.

Updated May 06

It looks like it's possible that we have at least one member of the Brewers' front office as part of The Bullpen readership. The Brew Crew just signed Scott Podsednik to a two-year contract extension, no doubt in part because we've talked him up a little bit here. Congrats, Scott, and where are my complimentary box seats? ;-)

posted by Tom Renbarger 6:48 PM