Suppan Sandwich
Posts might be scarce the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow (well, today, technically) I’m moving to a new home, and with finals week rapidly approaching, I will have to crunch the time in order to find any time to post anything. Once this summer comes and gets in full swing, I should be back to my ideal three-times-per-week posting schedule.
Normally I’ve been posting on Mondays as a weekend’s digest, but with Comcast unable to come to put internet and cable in until later on Sunday night then you can expect me not to post a Monday post and you might only see one post the next two weeks as my schedule until then is pretty packed. Now, onto the Crew
Earlier this month I said after the first two awful starts by Jeff Suppan that it wasn’t fair to throw him under the bus and to give him time to correct himself. One of the things that concerned me as well as everyone else was that noone had swung and missed at a Suppan fast(meat)ball, but that was obviously a small sample size and Suppan had simply been struggling with his control and mechanics as he adjusted to the beginning of the season.
Perhaps he’s over it. In his two starts since being thrown to the curb, he’s tossed 12 1/3 innings with 9 strikeouts and 4 walks and an ERA hovering around 3. Not bad for a guy who two starts ago was a prime candidate to get DFA’d. But the problem wasn’t absolutely with Suppan – many reactionary fans were just being impatient.
People who have watched Suppan pitch over his career seemed to have unrealistic expectations of what he is supposed to be in the organization. It’s almost like many Brewer fans expected Suppan to be as good as Derek Lowe and eat 7 innings every single start. No. That’s not who he is. He’s a career 4.65 ERA guy who averages less than 6 innings per appearance (this includes bullpen appearances) and has less than a 2:1 K/BB ratio. In other words, he already is awful, and Brewer fans seemed to be begging for an excuse to drop his hefty contract.
Suppan may not be that great of a pitcher, but he’s durable and not awful and starters like those are found in every single rotation across the majors, proving that guys like Suppan or Joe Blanton of the Phillies are definitely valuable commodities and if they’re capable of pitching 5-6 innings of one-run ball every couple of starts, I’m absolutely happy to see what we have in the rotation right now.
I could sit here and cherry pick bad starts by any pitcher and it’s not any more or less significant than the two starts Suppan had at the beginning of the year. Consider Yovani Gallardo’s start earlier this year against the Reds and a start he had
Total between two starts: 7 2/3 IP, 18 ER, and a bunch of other statistics that are much worse than Jeff Suppan’s. You could cherry pick this for any pitcher. Just because Suppan was pitching horribly for two straight starts doesn’t mean anything in the long run. If he continues to throw up an ERA of nearly 6 and uses half of his starts to run around in circles and take a dump on the field, I’m absolutely fine with throwing him to the wolves, but I’m confident that he’ll turn it around enough to keep his ERA right around his career line and put the past behind him. I’m with you, Soup.
With all that said, let’s just celebrate the recent winning streak as it happens. A 2-4 homestand that left many fans wondering about the swagger and pitching of the team has turned into a 6-4 record that seems about par with what we’d expect. This is the power of assuming a small sample size when analyzing early season statistics. We’re two games over .500!
I suppose you could argue that Macha set Suppan up for all the outrage by naming him the starting pitcher and having him pitch the first game of the year. With that came a little higher expectation for his performance.