Meyer Dominates

The late game Wednesday night produced an impressive performance by Alex Meyer. He pitched seven shutout inning against the Nationals, allowing Washington’s only hit of the game in the sixth inning. The Angels went on to a 7-0 victory.

In Wednesday’s Beat the Streak post, the neural network ranked Daniel Murphy tenth. That’s a very unusual ranking for Murphy, and I thought Meyer must be doing something interesting. Looking at his splits going into Thursday’s game, he allowed a very low batting average, but a high OBP. He alowed almost as many walks as hits. All those walks are plate appearances against him without a hit, so the actual probability of getting a hit against Meyer, his Hit Average, is very low. It was .174 going into the game.

What Meyer showed he could in Wednesday’s game is limit hits without walking batters. He walked just one in seven innings, lowering his OBP allowed 20 points. Maybe he had his Randy Johnson moment. Nolan Ryan told Johnson that he needed to cut down on his walks. Johnson did that, and became a Hall of Famer.

Dusty Baker appears to have no sense of drama, by the way. People want to see Bryce Harper play against Mike Trout, but Baker gave Harper the night off on Wednesday. Trout hit a home run, having Harper out made the game going in less interesting. I understand that Baker is thinking long term, but sometimes you need to promote the game.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2thV2SH