I have never claimed to know more about baseball than anyone else, Chef, and I don't know exactly why you say things like that every time we disagree about something. If I thought I knew more than anyone else, I suspect that I'd be really bored talking to a bunch of people who aren't as smart as I am. I'm here offering my opinions just like everyone else, and I enjoy disagreeing with people because it offers much more opportunity for thoughtful discussion than if we agree about everything and all that's left to say is "yeah, good point." I want to have thoughtful discussion specifically
because I recognize that everyone here has their own unique insight to bring to the table. I don't really know why you get so offended and take it so personally when we don't see eye to eye on something. I actually like you and tend to enjoy your posts a lot, but when you start whining about "ESPN armchair analysts" or accuse me of thinking I know more than anyone else, you just become abrasive. I assure you that I have no other agenda here but to discuss baseball and specifically the Royals with a bunch of people who share my interest. I don't think I know more than you or anyone else, we just look at the game through different lenses, and that's fine. I don't agree with a lot of positions you take, that RBI is a valuable stat, that Emil Brown was a valuable player, etc, but I respect that you have those views, and all I can do is to explain why I disagree. And then you can fire back and we'll talk it out, and this is how discussion takes place and is the main reason this thread has spanned 155 colorful, interesting pages.
As far as Meche: don't get me wrong, I respect that he minimized the damage so well, and I'm glad he managed to pull off a quality start, even if he did only meet the bare minimum requirements. But he allowed eight hits and four walks in six innings. Twelve baserunners, an average of two per inning. You're not going to win a ton of games with a WHIP of 2. The walks are the most troubling. Look at Meche's season last year. He only allowed six walks in the entire month of June. Now, part of that is the Tigers being a good, patient lineup. Part of it is Tim Welke's inconsistent strike zone yesterday. And part of it is that Meche just wasn't as sharp as he was through much of last season.
Royals Authority found that the average movement of Meche's fastball yesterday was 12.1 inches, from an average last season of 10.7. Now, there is some debate in the comments section on their blog about whether or not they were correctly interpreting the data, but the basic point they were trying to get at was that Meche's fastball may have been moving more than intended, causing him to miss his spots. The debate concerns whether he was consistently throwing ~12 inches, or was he all over the place and merely averaged 12.1? They didn't provide that data and perhaps didn't even take it into account themselves, so it is an important point to consider; obviously if Meche was consistently getting about the same foot of movement, that's something that he probably was expecting, or could at least correct for as the game went on. So it might be nothing. Or if he was getting a lot more or less movement from pitch to pitch, it might be indicative that Meche's control was off yesterday. Again, I want to stress that this is mere speculation about one possible reason for all the baserunners he allowed -- not only the walks, but perhaps not being able to hit his spots made him more hittable as well.
The important point to bear in mind is that, regardless of the reason, Meche let way too many guys on base yesterday. I applaud him for getting out of trouble with minimal damage, but I'm not going to ignore that he got himself into trouble in the first place. Posnanski can write whatever he wants; I will readily concede that he knows way more about the game than I do, but I'm going to have to disagree with him on this. Meche did his part to keep the team in the game, but he was shaky through four innings yesterday. That said, he did get better toward the end. I posted at the end of the fourth inning (was reeeeeally hoping other people would be here so we could have a dialogue going during the game, but oh well) that I'd be surprised if he pitched more than one more inning unless he managed to buckle down and breeze through the fifth -- and after giving up the homer to Cabrera, he got through the fifth and the sixth in like 15 pitches. That was great. The rest of his game was not. WHIP of 2.00 is going to be a recipe for disaster more often than not.
It's also important to remember that the quality start is, itself, not without some controversy. If you consistently come out and meet the bare minimum requirements every time, you'll end up with a not so amazing ERA of 4.50 (which is, after one game, Meche's ERA for the season to date). What makes quality start a decent stat is that usually pitchers who consistently make quality starts tend to also consistently exceed those minimum requirements a great deal. Pointing to a single six run, three inning game as a quality start doesn't really mean a whole lot, but pointing out that Meche made 23 quality starts last year and tied with Tom Glavine for fifth in MLB, is more meaningful. Against the Tigers, I'll take as many quality starts as we can get regardless whether or not they only meet the minimum threshold, but it doesn't mean there weren't still some red flags in Meche's performance yesterday.
But whatever. Let's all just be glad they pulled off the win yesterday. I know I made a number of pessimistic posts during the course of the game, but you'll just have to forgive me for it -- a lifetime spent watching the Royals, Chiefs, and MU will do that to a person (though apparently not to you, Chef; I do admire your boundless optimism). But they went and they weathered 6+ innings of Verlander, DeJesus's injury, Meche's twelve baserunners, Tomko's game-tying home run, extra innings on the road against the best lineup in the league, another Luis Silverio-driven baserunning gaff, and they came out of Opening Day with a win. And it's been a day and a half now and I'm still excited about it, can't wait for the game tomorrow when Bannister will hopefully begin his campaign to shut all the sabermetricians up about BABIP and DIPS. So we've at least got that to agree on.
