Over at Up In the Rockies, Dan takes a look at Jamey Wright's godawful home/road splits. The other day, I implied things weren't quite "wright" here at Coors with Jamey pitching myself. His OBP is terrible and we can pretty much count on a disastrous line every time he takes the mound at 20th and Blake if you project from his season long stats. Being the flip-flopping Devil's Advocate that I am, however, I think it might be informative if we stepped back and looked at another way of breaking things up and figure out if maybe Jamey could still be worth hanging onto for the second half after all.
Consider:
Pitcher A: 10 Games, 56 and a third innings pitched, 71 hits, 32 walks (more than one every two innings), for an astonishing WHIP of 1.8284.
Pitcher B: 6 Games, 40 innings (an average of six and two thirds per start), 50 hits, eight walks (one every five innings), for a WHIP of 1.45. No, it's not that great, but it isn't terrible for a fifth (sixth?) starter, either.
Of course these lines are both from the same Jamey Wright, pitcher A represents his April/May aggregate stats and Pitcher B compiles his June/July numbers. Included in the pitcher A column is the start that seems to have marked the turnaround point for Jamey: this May 30th outing at St. Louis where we wound up losing five to four after Matt Anderson and Jay Witasick couldn't hold the lead they were given. Up through that game, Jamey had two games where he walked fewer than three batters; since then, he's walked two or less every time out.
So today we'll watch for a little battle of theories on Wright. In my Devil's Advocate role right now, I say he's a different pitcher both home and away from what he was before, and we need to keep him unless the Phils offer in return something more irresistable than their cheesesteaks (in my comment on Dan's site I gave my opinion that knowing how Ed Wade operates, they probably will do just that), while Dan's theory seems to imply that we're in trouble anytime he takes the mound at Coors -and bear in mind the total stats still back his side up. Tonight will give us a little further glimpse into what's really true about the matter we call Jamey.