There were eight games played in the National League Sunday. In those eight games, 79 pitchers were used. That's only one pitcher away from ten per game. Over in the American League, there were 55 pitchers used in seven games.
In fairness, there were three extra inning games Sunday in the National League, but the longest was eleven innings. Not exactly extra long contests.
Tony LaRussa was again a big player in all this. The Cardinals won a ten inning game today against the Reds to salvage one game in the series. LaRussa used eight pitchers. Eight! And a ninth pitcher was called on to pinch hit (Wellemeyer and he struck out).
The first position of the Cardinals' batting order started with Schumaker. He was Sunday's designated guy for the old "double-switch." That's where a new pitcher is brought in during an inning and a position player is also replaced to favorably allow more at bats before the pitcher's spot in the order has to come up again. Anyway, Schumaker's spot in the batting order featured ten players by the end of the game. Ten!
Think about that. That's ten players a box score enthusiast has to read through before you even get to the second guy on the batting order. And that's twelve guys to sift through just to figure out what Pujols did for the day. Can you imagine what those fans' scorecards looked like?
Oh, and it's not all bad. Micah Owings pinch hit for the Reds in the bottom of the ninth and hit a homer to tie the game and send it into extra innings. How cool is that?
1 comment:
Look at Micah's stats through 134 ABs. It blows my mind.
His OPS is .934! This guy should be a DH.
Carlos Zambrano is a good hitting pitcher. Owings is a good hitter, period.
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