Panthers and Blames After 107 Games

Searched “2008 blame panther” and came up with this FANPOST.

I agree with you on that one. When it gets “too close to call” I usually just let everyone else haggle over it. It seems stupid to me to argue about it.

I can’t recall any time where the bats have been shutout and we’ve still hung the blame on our pitcher.

If the bats cant bring a run across it doesn’t matter how good our pitching is, I feel like most of the people here realize that.

I guess I cold be wrong though, I haven’t looked at the stats either.

group of pitchers that tend to get way more blames than panthers, that being the relief corps. For instance, just tallying those who’ve only made relief appearances, (Not starter/relievers like Loux and Palmer) you get a whopping 2-15 record of panthers to blames(Shields, Fuentes, Speier, Dondo, Bulger and Jepsen, for those keeping track). Last year, the relief corps (Franky, Shields, Speier, Dondo and Oliver) went 8-15, which demonstrates that this years bullpen has been worse than last years but also shows the huge bias against relievers. Arredondo, for instance, was 10-2 with a 1.62 ERA last year and yet went 0-3 in panthers/blames.

I won’t comment on whether this is fair or not, but I wanted to show that the reason pitchers seem to get more blames stems directly from the record of the relief corps. The record of starting pitchers is much more favorable, even throwing in pure negatives like Ortega. It’s also interesting to note that by far our best reliever this year, Darren Oliver, has a 0-0 record, despite being 4-0 with a 2.76 ERA in 45.2 innings.

Because that’s about 4 times more than Speier’s worth.