Weird Things....

Not a lot of positive things to discuss right now for the Indians. They're now 3-7 in extra inning games. Let's take a look at a few of the extra-inning numbers:

Date	Result	Innings	RF/RA*
4/5	Loss	11	-3
4/6	Loss	15	-1
4/10	Loss	10	-1
4/27	Win	10	+4
5/1	Win	13	+1
5/7	Loss	10	-1
5/14	Win	10	+1
5/23	Loss	10	-1
5/25	Loss	12	-1
6/1	Loss	12	-1

*Runs For/Runs Against

Let's take a more in-depth look at some of these numbers. In extra innings the Indians staff has thrown 20 and 1/3 innings for an ERA of 3.98 (not that bad, eh?). Our opponents pitchers have thrown 17 and 1/3 innings for an ERA of 3.11. Now, although those numbers are almost a full run apart, there's not THAT huge of a difference. Before I calculated these numbers, I was expecting to see how bad the bullpen has been in the bonus frames but the lackluster offense has been mostly to blame (especially if you take into account that 4 of our 6 runs came in one game).

This makes me think a little bit about the Pythagorean Winning Percentage developed by Bill James. It calculates what a team's record should be by comparing runs scored to runs surrendered. The 2003 Indians should have been 73-89, a full 5 games better than they actually were. This is to be expected for a young team. So far this year, the Indias should be about 1.5 games better than they are (how do you win half a game?). Perhaps I'm looking a little too hard for a silver lining to this somewhat dreadful season but I can still derive some hopefulness from what I've seen.

By the way, the Tribe is on pace for 32 extra inning games. That'd have be some kind of record, right?

Trivia Question of the Day
What is this a picture of?
The answer will appear in the next entry

Curb Your Enthusiasm
Weird things can happen at the ballpark. A man in Southern California was recently proven innocent by footage filmed by the HBO Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Not only is this show one of the best on television, but now it's solving murder mysteries too? Is there anything Larry David cannot do?

How 'bout the guy caught by his parole officer while on "Kiss Cam" at a Reds game? What are the chances of that? No.... really. The chances that he gets on the big screen, his parole officer is there, sees him, and recognizes him have got to be less than Lloyd Christmas' chances with Mary Swanson.

Anyone know of any other strange occurrences at the ballpark? These boggle my mind.