Historical 29 Game Starts Under Scioscia

The M’s are reeling pretty bad, too. Get a win any which way you can tonight, and then take out your frustrations on Seattle. We are in a very winnable division. Let’s take it by the horns.

“but, but we were 6 and 14 in 2002 and look what happened!!!” argument.

I’m down, but far from out. Our boys in red can do this. I believe.

we came out of spring training in an offensive funk.

People sometimes don’t realize what that does to a pitching staff. they feel like they have to be perfect and can’t give up any runs. A few games of 6-7 runs will do wonders for the pitching staff too

declining veterans in the twilight of their career and young guns who haven’t entirely proven themselves yet.

C’mon, think about it. Matsui is Hubie Brooks and dudes like Aybar are young GA’s…

is that this is not a Mike Scioscia team. At least its not currently built right now to allow him to play Soth baseball.

I feel like it will be tougher to hit our stride like in years past if we don’t have a solid leadoff hitter with the ability to take walks and steal bases, a number 9 hitter that can do the same, and some speed in the middle to snag some bases and go first to third consistantly.

When is the earliest we could see Bourjos? A question for those of you who track contracts, service time and optimum windows for promotion.

we will be screwed this season because in the Sosh years when we are at 13 wins or less this point in the season we have missed the post-season.

that Soth-era teams, while they may get off to rough starts, have the ship righted by this point in the season if they are going to end up strong. Note that we are a game behind where we were in 2003 and 2006.

I’m not saying that this dooms 2010, but this does mean that a small level of worry at this point is perfectly justified. We are past the “RE-LAX” point.

No one has mentioned run differential. I realize that this audience doesn’t like to hear about run differential, but even if you don’t put much stock in it as a predictor of wins and losses, the fact remains that good teams score more runs than their opponents, and bad teams do the opposite. Look at the Angels’ run differentials through 30 games during the Scioscia era:

2000    +3
2001    -1
2002   +17
2003    -1
2004   +29
2005   +19
2006   -19
2007   +12
2008    +4
2009    -2
2010   -48

The Angels have typically been slow starters, yes. But they’ve never done horribly out of the gate either. The worst was 2006, but -19 runs is fairly pedestrian by comparison to this team. This team has been horrible. So horrible that if you add up all the runs the other Scioscia teams with negative run differentials through 30 games have been outscored by and double it, the 2010 team has still been outscored by two more runs!

Their current -48 mark is worst in the American League. Worse than Baltimore, worse than KC, worse than Cleveland, worse than everyone in baseball but Houston and Pittsburgh (and the Astros are only 6 runs worse). Performing at the very bottom of the league for 30 games is uncharted territory for Mike Scioscia. It’s very possible that the Angels have never done this poorly over any 30 game stretch in their recent history, though that would require more checking. Forgive me for being more pessimistic about his ability to “right the ship” this time around.