Jon Garland, Jose Contreras and Gavin Floyd each have two things in common:
- They've each gotten the Cowley treatment at least once this past week.
- They're each having thought-provoking Septembers.
Here are their lines
after today's loss:
| |
W-L |
ERA |
IP |
H |
R |
ER |
HR |
BB |
K |
OPS |
| Garland |
1-3 |
1.80 |
30.0 |
27 |
11 |
6 |
1 |
4 |
18 |
.571 |
| Contreras |
3-0 |
2.25 |
28 |
33 |
10 |
7 |
2 |
9 |
16 |
.787 |
| Floyd |
0-2 |
2.95 |
18.1 |
20 |
7 |
6 |
1 |
5 |
16 |
.730 |
Combine these three solid lines with
the improving performances of Jerry Owens and Danny Richar, and the fact that Josh Fields is still putting balls out of the yard, and it's shaped up to be a pretty decent September for Sox fans. Even the ones rooting for draft position instead of wins aren't faring too poorly, since today's loss returns the Sox to .500 for the month. If the season ended today, Kenny Williams
would have the fourth pick at his disposal.
But back to the pitchers...
The nice thing about this stretch for the three aforementioned apple hurlers is that Williams won't be in as big of a bind in general. Contreras might be convincing potential suitors that he's worth the rest of his deal, Garland isn't showing any Freddy Garcia-like signs of injury for those needing a pitcher for a year, and Floyd isn't crapping his pants in the big leagues, indicating that he could be better than Fifth Starter Hell.
What Williams shouldn't do is get too comfortable in these lines. One reason is the quality of opponents they have faced:
- Garland: Detroit, Minnesota, Los Angeles Angels, Kansas City.
- Contreras: Cleveland, Minnesota, Los Angeles, Kansas City.
- Floyd: Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City
Detroit and Cleveland have legitimate firepower, but the Angels are squarely middle of the pack, and Minnesota and Kansas City are the worst non-Sox offenses in the league.
The other reason: September is usually a pitcher's month.
Jerome Holtzman wrote a column on Feb. 19, 1989 titled "Spring training a lousy yardstick," in which he wrote that the front and back ends of the seasons favor pitchers the most. In particular, this section stuck with me:
Breaking-ball pitchers are always more effective in spring training and in September, though the latter is true for pitchers in general. There are two reasons: in the spring the hitters are struggling, groping for their timing, and by September, they're tired. Hitters play every day, pitchers once every fifth day. The 1988 cumulative major league batting averages, which I assume are typical, are the lowest in April and September.
Of course, in 2007, the opposite is true. Pitchers are having
a more difficult time in September than in any other month this season, both in terms of ERA and OPS.
Historically, however, this claim has merit. 2007 is the only season in the last 20 seasons that had Septembers in which the final month was in the top three for offenses. Otherwise, 11 times in the last 20 years September has been the best month for pitchers in terms of OPS allowed and ERA. It has never been worse than the third-best month for pitchers, barring this season.
I'm not quite sure what's throwing the numbers out of whack this year -- either a bunch of guys having a September like Mark Buehrle's last year, an abnormal number of September call-ups getting starts, or perhaps just some really good offenses going nuts. At any rate, we can probably say that September isn't anti-pitcher, so that's another reason to be cautious of these improvements.
That's not to dismiss what Garland, Contreras and Floyd have accomplished this month. Even if you qualify their numbers, they're still quality. I'm more or less saying that Williams shouldn't let this month cloud his judgment when it comes to pulling the trigger on a deal. The three of them are probably better pitchers than their 2007 numbers, but not nearly enough to make up for the glaring holes in the offense and the farm system.
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Your 2007 White Sox in a nutshell:Greg Walker:"We made some mistakes, going back to last spring -- hell, going back to last winter. We know some things that we missed on this year. Just looking back on last spring, I spent a lot of time with the young guys -- Josh Fields and guys like that, Jerry Owens -- but ultimately, they didn't have a chance to make our team at the start of the year. Next spring, me and Mike Gellinger will spend a majority of the time with our guys, the big boys. Just little things like that. We have a deep passion here to get this thing right.''
Paul Konerko:''When you hear, 'Oh, you didn't have your actual lineup out there until the last three spring-training games, you can't do that.' Well, yeah, we did. We did it in 2005. 'Oh, you can't have your top pitchers in 'B' games or Jimmy [Thome] getting all those at-bats in 'B' games because it's not really a good-enough test to get ready.' Uh, yeah, it is. We won a World Series with it.
''It's like all those little things, you definitely reach a point where you have to switch it up, and it sounds like it's coming next spring. But I don't think any of the coaches or anyone should be second-guessing any of the stuff that players actually ask to do so they can get ready because that's what we did when we won it all.''
Walker's quote made me a little bit excited about 2008; Konerko has me pumped up for either 2005 or 2011.
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I'll be heading out to Washington later today, rooting for Aaron Rowand and Tadahito Iguchi against the Washington Nationals. RFK will be the 15th major-league park under my belt, although it'll soon be the third dead one. Enjoy your respective weekends.