PopTop
10-27-2005, 03:13 PM
On Day 1 of the Great Void that is known as baseball's offseason, I went back and dug up some stats about World Series sweeps, plus wanted to toss out a stat that I think ended up meaning a lot is such a close Series.
I kept score for all of the Astros playoffs games except the one I attended (Game 5, NLCS). I don't use a normal scorebook, preferring to use a plain old spiral notebook so I have plenty of space to make notes. In addition to pitch counts, I also like to keep track of just the ball-strike counts, and that really told a tale this time. If you sat there thinking Houston pitchers were always behind in the count or forced deeper into the count or Chicago hitters fouled off more pitches, you were right.
Astros hurlers threw 678 pitches according to my scorebook as opposed to 617 by the White Sox (boxscores at ESPN have it as a 675-618 margin, so my numbers are at least close). Considering Houston pitchers worked more than one inning less than Chicago pitchers, the gap is even wider.
Houston pitchers also faced Chicago batters 22 times with a full count while the reverse situation was but 14 times for White Sox pitchers versus Astros hitters. Jermaine Dye worked five full counts in the four games, starting with his first AB in Game 1 when he fell behind Roger Clemens 0-2 only to battle through a 9-pitch AB and eventually hit the home run that really started it all for Chicago.
I kept score for all of the Astros playoffs games except the one I attended (Game 5, NLCS). I don't use a normal scorebook, preferring to use a plain old spiral notebook so I have plenty of space to make notes. In addition to pitch counts, I also like to keep track of just the ball-strike counts, and that really told a tale this time. If you sat there thinking Houston pitchers were always behind in the count or forced deeper into the count or Chicago hitters fouled off more pitches, you were right.
Astros hurlers threw 678 pitches according to my scorebook as opposed to 617 by the White Sox (boxscores at ESPN have it as a 675-618 margin, so my numbers are at least close). Considering Houston pitchers worked more than one inning less than Chicago pitchers, the gap is even wider.
Houston pitchers also faced Chicago batters 22 times with a full count while the reverse situation was but 14 times for White Sox pitchers versus Astros hitters. Jermaine Dye worked five full counts in the four games, starting with his first AB in Game 1 when he fell behind Roger Clemens 0-2 only to battle through a 9-pitch AB and eventually hit the home run that really started it all for Chicago.