Archive for May, 2011

Liriano & Verlander Toss No-Hitters

Monday, May 9th, 2011

Choppers pitcher Francisco Liriano

There have been a ton of close calls this season, but Francisco Liriano and Justin Verlander managed to break through to complete the first two no-hitters of the season in a span of five days.  First, the Choppers’ Liriano picked up a no-no on Tuesday evening.  Then, the Kings’ Verlander did the same on Saturday afternoon.

Of the two, Liriano’s no-hitter has to be the more improbable one.  He entered the game against the White Sox with an ERA over 9.00.  He had never pitched a complete game in his career.  And for a while, it looked like he would have trouble completing this one as well.  A bunch of early walks sent his pitch count soaring.  On the game, he walked six and only struck out two.  So there were probably at least a half dozen more impressive starts than his just last week, but a no-hitter deserves special mention.  Despite the ugly walk/strike out numbers, it was very much a dominating performance.  The White Sox hitters only hit a couple balls hard all evening.

Liriano is still having a tough season.  His ERA stands at 6.61 and the win was only his second this season.  He has walked more hitters than he has struck out too.  Prior to this start, he was on the verge of a possible bullpen demotion by the Twins.  You have to think the Choppers were losing patience with him as well.  He has been the sour point on an otherwise surprisingly solid Choppers pitching staff.  If he continues to pitch like he did last Tuesday, things could get very interesting as the Choppers already find themselves in third place and are the surprise team near the top of the standings right now.

Verlander’s no-hitter was less surprising and much more dominating.  He took a perfect game into the 8th inning against the Blue Jays, but a walk to J.P. Arencibia on an extended at bat ruined that.  Arencibia was quickly erased on a double play though, allowing Verlander to finish the game facing the minimum 27 batters.  This was Verlander’s second career no-hitter, joining Mark Buehrle as the only active DTBL pitchers with multiple no-hitters.  (Technically, Roy Halladay has two as well, but his playoff no-hitter didn’t count towards his DTBL stats, so I’m not including him.)

The Kings pitchers have had a mediocre start to the season, but Verlander has been solid as usual.  He has a 3.16 ERA with 3 wins, a sub 1.00 WHIP and 55 strike outs.  Verlander, his Tigers teammate Max Scherzer, and Tommy Hanson have been outstanding for the Kings, but the bottom of their rotation has been a disappointment.

As mentioned, there have been plenty of close calls on other potential no-hitters this season including Anibal Sanchez twice.  Also, two Cougars pitchers took no-hitters into at least the 7th inning on the same night last Friday:  Jaime Garcia and Derek Lowe.  The way pitching has dominated so far this season, you have to figure we’ll see a few more guys complete the task.

Here’s another indication on just how good the pitching has been.  Only one DTBL team has an ERA over 4.00 (Demigods).  They were inching towards the 4.00 mark a couple days ago, so there is still a good chance we could see all ten teams under that mark at some point soon.

Once again, Mariano Rivera’s save record is getting bumped to a later post.  I promise to write about him soon!

Weaver Cruises Through April

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

Moonshiners pitcher Jered Weaver

My timing isn’t very good with this post as Jered Weaver picked up his first loss of the season tonight.  However, this doesn’t change the fact that he had a truly remarkable April and is the primary reason why the Moonshiners find themselves in first place one month into the 2011 season.

Weaver finished the month with a perfect 6-0 record, winning all six of his starts.  He compiled a 0.99 ERA, 0.788 WHIP and 49 strike outs, all very impressive numbers.  Shockingly, none of these marks were good enough to lead the league, except wins, but I’ll get to that in a bit.  His six wins are two more than any other pitcher has accumulated though.

The Moonshiners acquired Weaver from the Jackalope during the first round of the draft in exchange for their first round pick.  As we all knew at the time, Weaver was exactly what the Moonshiners needed:  a true ace.  However, I don’t think anyone expected him to come out of the gates quite this strong.  He has helped lead the Moonshiners to a top two ranking in every pitching category except saves (4th).  Combined with the league’s best offense to date, the Moonshiners find themselves 13 points ahead of the pack with a very impressive 87 points.

Trading Weaver hasn’t really killed the Jackalope as you much as you might think though.  They still have arguably three of the top five pitchers in the league and are right behind the Moonshiners in total pitching points.  If their offense, specifically Albert Pujols, picks it up a bit, the second place Jackalope will be right on the Moonshiners’ heals.  Ryan Braun has carried their offense so far, with a league leading ten home runs and a .356 batting average.  Braun would probably get my vote for Offensive Player of the Month.  One other candidate for that title would be Darkhorses outfielder Andre Ethier.  Just a couple minutes ago, he recorded a RBI single to extend his hitting streak to 28 games.  Going into tonight, he led the league with a .378 average, just a few points ahead of his Dodger teammate Matt Kemp.

Weaver wasn’t the only pitcher who compiled ridiculous statistics in April.  Amazingly, Gators pitcher Josh Johnson has him beat in both ERA and WHIP.  Johnson has a 0.88 ERA and 0.707 WHIP.  Some bad luck has kept his win total at just three though.  Johnson has carried the Gators to the third most pitching points in the league, however a putrid offense has kept them near the bottom of the league standings.  The third pitcher who deserves special mention is Weaver’s Moonshiners and Angels teammate Dan Haren.  Haren has a 1.23 ERA and a 0.750 WHIP with four wins.  At one point, Weaver and Haren combined for eight wins in eight starts.

There is one other big news item tonight.  Mariano Rivera became the DTBL’s all-time saves leader with the save he picked up against the Tigers this evening.  This is deserving of a separate blog post though, so I will go into more detail about Rivera later this week.