2010 Dres: The Pitching Worm is Turning

It is not rare in baseball that players who were not highly thought of who suddenly is a world beater at the major league level.  Andres Torres is an excellent example of that for the Giants.  The equivalent for San Diego is their pitching staff:  Clayton Richard and Wade LeBlanc were considered, at best, a back of the rotation fodder, not the aces that they have been so far this season, with a 3.60 and 3.49 ERA, respectively.

Most of the time, though, these players eventually regress back to their actual talent level.  Giants examples in the past include Larry Herndon and Danny Gladden, who came up, had a burst of great playing, and settled into their true talent level in the seasons after that.  Regression to the mean is the rule.  Hopefully, that is happening to the 'Dres finally, as the staff has pitched very well for a long time.

Regression of Their Rotation

They started out April very well:

LeBlanc:  0.52 ERA in 3 starts

Garland:  2.57 ERA in 5 starts

Richard:  3.00 ERA in 5 starts

Correia:  3.86 ERA in 5 starts

Latos:  6.20 ERA in 4 starts

They got great performances to make up for the poorer ones in May:

Latos:  1.54 ERA in 6 starts

Garland:  1.85 ERA in 6 starts

Richard:  3.00 ERA in 5 starts

Correia:  5.22 ERA in 5 starts

LeBlanc:  5.81 ERA in 5 starts

It finally was catching up with them much more in June, as performances slipped overall:

Richard:  2.31 ERA in 6 starts

Latos:  2.37 ERA in 5 starts

LeBlanc:  2.70 ERA in 6 starts

Garland:  5.28 ERA in 5 starts

Correia:  7.83 ERA in 5 starts

And it continued in July for the most part, except for Latos:

Latos:  1.04 ERA in 4 starts

Correia:  3.90 ERA in 5 starts

LeBlanc:  4.11 ERA in 5 starts

Garland:  5.02 ERA in 5 starts

Richard:  6.00 ERA in 5 starts

And particularly after the All-Star Break, in the second half:

Latos:  2.45 ERA in 2 starts

Garland:  3.80 ERA in 4 starts

Correia:  4.00 ERA in 3 starts

LeBlanc:  4.42 ERA in 3 starts

Richard:  4.94 ERA in 4 starts

On the Road Finally

Another thing catching up with the Dres is their relative lack of road games.  The Giants had 5 more road games than they did just a few days ago.  Now the bill comes due as they will have 17 games on the road out of the next 20 games, with 3 at home in the middle against the Pirates.  They face LA (32-22 at home), AZ ( 24-30), Giants (33-20), Cubs (26-28), Brewers (24-28).   They should be roughly .500 over this next 20 game period, I eyeballed the games played vs. the home records, and if those hold true (SD is 29-20 on road, so maybe lean more towards them), then they will end up 11-9, 12-8.

The Giants, though, as I noted in my other post, will have a tough stretch themselves, facing good teams like Colorado, Atlanta, San Diego, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cincinnati, so it will not be a cakewalk for the Giants either, over the next 22 games.   They will have to take then on, much as they have been doing the past month, and perform well.  But at least the Giants are at home for 10 of those 22 games, that makes it much more likely that the Giants will get closer to SD in this next stretch of games.

And we'll have to because then SD gets 12 of 15 at home, including 6 games vs. AZ (gimmees at this point, they are selling off players right and left) plus 3 each against LA and COL, and who knows if they haven't started their sell-off by then.