Notes from last night’s win:

• Another decent starting-pitching outing. By striking out six, walking three and yielding one dinger, the Todd Wellemeyer turned in a 55 FIGS. It seemed like the Rockies were making decent contact but simply finding gloves. Indeed,the Rockies’ batting average on balls in play (BABIP) was .273, a bit lower than the expected .290-.300 range. So yes, the Colonel allowed only one earnie, but he got a bit lucky in the process.
• Speed kills: The Rockies showed why stealing in the upper part of the lineup is often a bad idea. Down by one run with two outs in the fifth inning, Troy "Jeter-lover" Tulowitzki attempted a stolen base. But with Matt Holliday at the plate — and a 2-1 count — it was likely that Wellemeyer was going to walk Holliday, the Rockies’ best hitter (the Cardinals have pitched around him all series), and Tulo would’ve been on second, anyway. As it was, Tulo ran on ball three and was thrown out to end the inning. Oh, and one final consideration is that guy behind home plate.
• Speaking of speed, though, did anyone else enjoy watching Rico Washington go home to third?
• Colorado played right into Troy Glaus’s hands by walking Albert Pujols with a runner on third in the fifth inning. Of his nine plate appearances so far, Glaus has flied out to right five times. True to form, that’s what he did, driving the run in.
• With two walks yesterday, is Little Cesar proving to be a legit "second leadoff man"? Now that the Brewers have moved into the 21st century, too, with the pitcher-batting-eighth lineup, we’d like to introduce the official "Ninth-place hitter challenge"! It’s simple: The team whose ninth-place batters have the highest RC27 win. So far, Jason Kendall is outpacing Izturis, 20.00 to 0.61.
• Speaking of hitter tendencies, when will teams learn their lesson and start putting an infield shift on Ankiel?
• Before the start of each inning, Glaus takes grounders in foul territory. Superstition?
• With the first non-sellout after 165 regular-season games, it’s possible that ticket prices have reached market equilibrium.
• Hawpe’s home run seemed to wake Wellemeyer up a bit. He struck out the next four batters, looking like a man on fire.
• Interestingly, Hawpe’s home run also set off a series of six-consecutive Three True Outcomes from the Rockies.
  • Hawpe homered
  • Torrealba struck out
  • Nix struck out
  • Cook struck out
  • Taveras struck out
  • Helton walked

  We wonder what the record is.

• Speaking of TTO, of the 21 batters Wellemeyer faced, 10 — almost half! — were true outcomes. The Colonel is the Adam Dunn of pitchers!

This entry was posted by Pip on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 11:39 am and is filed under by the numbers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.