From: gerry@skatter.usask.ca
Subject: Re: Morris: more fuel for this debate
Organization: University of Saskatchewan
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 04:57:14 GMT

From article <1992Sep28.190928.25787@leland.Stanford.EDU>, by dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dave Eisen):
> In article <1992Sep28.173858.3022@unixg.ubc.ca> stlouis@unixg.ubc.ca (Phill St. Louis) writes:
> 
>>Has anyone noticed that Morris has only been allowing a BA of .204 at home?
>>The Skydome is a hitters ballpark and he is allowing only .204!!  This is
>>#1 in the League among pitchers who were on opening-day American League ML 
>>rosters for.  
> 
> This is certainly a point in his favor. And yes, Morris has been a
> good pitcher this year.
> 
> But BA is not all there is to baseball. And if I recall, Morris has
> a history of leading the league in most home runs allowed. I'd be more
> impressed if Morris was leading the league in slugging percentage
> allowed.
> 
> Of course, none of that matters very much.
> 
[some stuff deleted ...]
> 
> So even though Morris has allowed a low opposition BA, he does not
> have a particularly good ERA. So he's allowing runs. A low BA tells
> me that he's not allowing a whole lot of hits. But with an ERA like
> his, he *must* be giving up *something* that causes a lot of runs. 

Firstly let me say that I personally think Morris has done just fine although
he's certainly no Cy Young candidate. 

Last week on a TSN telecast they flashed Morris' home-road ERA's. Unfortunately
I didn't write them down. I do remember however that his home ERA was ~3
(actually 2.99 or 2.97 I'm not sure which). His road ERA however is > 5.
(something in the range of 5.3). Thus it appears that once again Morris is
well above average at home but sucks big time on the road.

Note that the .204 batting average mentioned in the first article was for the
Skydome his away OppBA is something like .298.

I have no explanation for the >2 run difference in his home-road ERA. Would
some Stat guru like to take a shot at it?

When I saw these numbers I simply couldn't believe somebody could be so good
and so bad, so I have a question for the Stats people. Is it normal for 
pitchers with ~4 ERA's(or worse) to pitch half of their games really well and
half their games like minor leaguers?

> 
> Maybe walks. Maybe extra base hits.
> 
> Either way, we know he's giving up these runs. Why does it matter
> how these runs are scored?

Well in this case we know that Morris gives up a tonne(note that's a metric
tonne) of runs on the road but relatively few at home thus it matters a great
deal. If the Jays win their division my suggestion to Cito would be to go
with a 4 man rotation in the ALCS something like: Cone,Morris,Key,Guzman. This
way Morris will only pitch at home where we know he's above average. Since
Cone seems to have settled in and is pitching very well and Key seems to be
back on track then giving two starts each to these three pitchers seems 
reasonable. Furthermore even with Guzman not pitching extremely effectively
I highly doubt he would be as bad as Morris seems to be on the road thus why
tempt fate just don't let Morris pitch on the road.

If they were to win the ALCS there would then be no safe way of giving Morris
both two starts and no road starts, thus I would minimize the probable damage
and go with a three man rotation of Cone,Key,Morris.(Of course Cito wouldn't
take my suggestion anyway so all this is academic).

> Dave Eisen    dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU   Sequoia Peripherals: (415) 967-5644
>       There's something in my library to offend everybody.
>         --- Washington Coalition Against Censorship
--
Gerald Gryschuk            Saskatoon,Saskatchewan = a place with 9 months
gerry@sask.usask.ca           of hockey and 3 months of poor skating.
Go Habs!!!
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