Some pitching notes...

A couple of pitching notes:

I've written a couple of times about the difference between David Wells' actual ERA, and how well he's really pitched. It's worth looking at again, after another spectacular effort last night.

David Wells

	GS	IP	H	R	ER	IP/G	ERA	WHIP	W	L
Total	11	67.33	72	34	34	6.12	4.54	1.16	5	4
"Healthy"	9	62.33	55	21	21	6.93	3.03	0.96	5	2
"Injured"	2	5	17	13	13	2.5	23.4	3.6	0	2

There are only four pitchers in the AL that have been better than Wells in his "healthy" starts. He had a couple of rocky "healthy" starts, but on the whole, he's been outstanding. Excepting, of course, the game where he got hurt and the game where he came back.

Sully's talking about the pitching this morning, and the inconsistency.

It’s hard to convince someone the Sox have good pitching when all you have to do is look up the team ERA and find that, even after last night’s gem by David Wells, the figure still sits at 4.90. Well the bullpen has been gasoline alley you say? You’re right but Boston starters have posted a hardly more impressive number of 4.75. And yet you can go and sort Major League Baseball pitchers by the number of Quality Starts they have posted and you will find 4 Red Sox starters on the first page of the leaderboard. Wade Miller does not appear on it simply because he started the season on the DL. So as bad as the pitching has been, far more often than not Boston gets a strong performance out of its starter. Problem is when they get a sub-par performance, it is truly sub-par.

He's exactly right. When they've been good, they've been very good. When they've been bad, they've been awful.

Red Sox Pitching/Defense

Runs allowed	Times
0-3	26
4-5	14
6-9	18
10+	6

As the table shows, they've actually had 26 good-to-very-good games in which they allowed 3 runs or less, and another 16 mediocre games in which they allowed 4-5. The problem is that there are 18 in which allowed 6-9, and they've allowed 10+ 6 times. Last year, the average runs allowed was 4.74 with a median of 4 - thus far this year, the average is 5 with a median of 5.

And a big part of the problem is that when the starters have been bad, the bullpen's come in and not calmed things down at all. Wells got knocked out in the 2nd in Oakland, and instead of giving the team a chance to come back, Gonzalez and Halama gave up 6 runs in the next 5 2/3 innings. Arroyo gave up 7 in 4 against the Cubs, Halama and Embree gave up 7 in the next 3. When it's been bad, it's been very, very bad. And it's been bad too often.