Back for the Bats

After sitting around for two days, the Durham Bulls are back in town to play the Louisville Bats for a couple of games. It does, however, appear as if they've brought their bad weather with them. We can hope that they don't have to spend yet another day in the dugout watching the rain fall. But if they do, at least they're home.

Regarding rainouts, with all his free time these days, Dirk Hayhurst seems to be channeling his inner old man of the mountain. Most recently he offers advice on how to deal with rainouts. As a fan, I really like this series of posts. But I have to say that I think that if I were a teammate I’d find them a bit preachy. Maybe that’s just a really old man resenting a 30-year old posing as an old man.

Speaking of rainouts, Nicole Johnson (wife of former Bull Elliot Johnson and Durham resident) blogs about a wonderful experience in Minneapolis recently.

In the interesting but did I really need to know this category, here's this:

A while back I read an article about the design and development of Ferrari sports cars. Turns out that the incredible sound those cars make is a deliberate design element. They actually gather folks together and decide what the automobile is going to sound like. This is relevant to a baseball blog only in that it brings to mind what all of us dislike about metal bats, the pinging sound that they make. According to this piece, a lot of work has been going into making the performance of the bats more wood-like. Wonder why they can’t do something about the sound?

Getting back to tonight's game, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal Bats Manager Rick Sweet isn't happy with his team's performance in the last couple of games.

Chart of the Day — WHIP

Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched is an interesting measure of a pitcher’s skill. In general, 1.00 is considered really good pitching. Basically what the stat measures is folks getting on base. In the case of this year’s Durham Bulls, however, the season is really too young to make any big judgements. 

(Note: In this chart the numbers after the pitcher’s name are: appearances, innings, won-loss, holds, saves, and blown saves.) 

If they were still with the team, Rob Delaney (1.06) and Brandon Gomes (1.13) would fit in rather nicely. Dirk Hayhurst’s WHIP was 0.90 when he went on the DL.

Should we be worried about three of our five starters being above the team average? You bet.

click on chart for larger view