Friday, July 15, 2011

The first pitch of Jose Mijares

Dick-N-Bert were talking during the eighth inning about Jose Mijares' struggles this season, a logical topic since Mijares was pitching that inning. At one point, Dick Bremer said something like: How many batters has he started 1-0?
Jose Mijares threw 22
pitches Thursday --
11 strikes, 11 balls.

Bremer merely wondered. I looked it up.

According to Baseball Reference, Mijares entered Thursday's play having faced exactly 99 hitters on the season.  Ten of those plate appearances ended on the first pitch, with split stats of .000/.200/.000 (he has hit two men with his first pitch). Of the other 89, 52 began 1-0; batters went .350/.500/.525 in those plate appearances. Only 37 started 0-1 (.258/.351/.323).

Mijares faced five men on Thursday. He started two off with Ball One, and he walked both of those hitters. He started three with Strike One, and retired them all (two strikeouts and a popup.) His updated stats by count can be found here; as I write this, B-R hasn't updated with Thursday's numbers, but that will come at some point Friday.

Mijares' ratios are out of whack. For the American League as a whole. there had been 48,173 plate appearances on the season. A bit less than 5,500 ended on the first pitch; more than 23,000 started 0-1; less than 19,800 started 1-0. He's also getting worse than average results when the first pitch is a ball, and not faring much better than average when the first pitch is a strike.

1 comment:

  1. I remember when Mijares's name was J.C. Romero, and then a couple of years later he turned into Juan (Walk) Rincon. You could always start yelling at your television screen when they were 2-0 on the count as you knew the best thing for the Twins at that point was for them to fake an injury and get themselves out of the game. It was kind of like watching Billy Gardner continually march out Ron Davis in 1984. His excuse was there was no one else to put in, but after blowing save after save, wouldn't it behoove you to at least try a Lenny Whitehouse, Pete Filson, or Rick Lysander? They actually had a chance to catch the Royals that year. That is kind of how I feel every time Mijares starts an inning with less than a four run lead anymore - ignore the lefty-lefty rule and put in your best pitcher at the moment.

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