4/24 Reds @ Cardinals - Easter Sunday!

Huge win for the Reds yesterday. Thank you all for continuing to visit my blog, we've just reached 1,000 views over 18 posts which is much higher than I thought I'd ever get! Now onto last night's game...my Twitter timeline was full of Reds' fans who had given up hope in the 4th inning down 2-0, just because the team has played bad lately. They forgot that this team has the will to win, and that it's baseball. People are so quick to write a team off that was in the playoffs last year, and has the talent to win the NL Central. Stop treating this team like the Bengals, who deserve to be doubted when they are down. Anyways, we've got a huge game tonight on Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN. We know that Jake Westbrook will start for the Cardinals, but the Reds starter is still up for grabs. Sam LeCure is the listed starter, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Volquez start and then push LeCure back a day because Volquez missed his start on Friday. For Volquez info vs Cardinals, check the post on 4/22/2011.

Sam LeCure has one career start vs the Cardinals, here is the game log. To see the stats of current Cardinals vs LeCure, check out this link. Now, a little analysis:

• LeCure only has given up 2 hits versus current Cardinals, one to Molina and one to Pujols.
• It's worth noting that LeCure had 4 walks in that game in 5.1 innings, but that is very un-LeCure like. He has 4 walks all year, so I doubt we see that again unless he can't handle the ESPN and Sunday Night pressure at Busch Stadium.
• The Cards have a lot of RHB, and LeCure holds RHB to .245 in his career, compared to .274 vs LHB.
• His K/BB ratio is 2.75 vs RHB, and 1.24 vs LHB, that's a huge difference and shows his confidence vs RHB. He has more walks vs LHB (17 to 12) while pitching to RHB much more often (170 to 114 Plate Appearances).

Pick to Click: Lance Berkman

Now, onto Jake Westbrook who is 1-2 with a 9.82 ERA. His last start he went 3 innings and gave up 7 runs on 7 hits vs the Washington Nationals. Here are his stats vs the Reds. Onto some of the other stuff:

• Westbrook has thrown more walks than strikeouts this year. He's walked 13 while only striking out 9 in 18.1 innings. He's also given up 30 hits in 18.1 innings.
• Gomes and Rolen have homers vs Westbrook, Rolen will most likely not start again tonight.
• The team as a whole has batted 16-53 (.302), and the only batter to really struggle vs him is Bruce at a 0-3 clip.
• Splits on avg are .276/.277, so there is no advantage there for RHB or LHB. Homers, hits, doubles, etc are all nearly the exact same as well.
• One difference in the splits is K/BB ratio, where vs RHB he has a huge advantage 2.88 to 1.21 for LHB.
• He has a 4.79 ERA at Busch Stadium, but has only given up 2 home runs there in 47 IP.
• One other thing to watch out on is pay extra attention on 0-1 and 1-0 pitch counts, as Westbrook gives up most of his hits in these pitch counts. I thought it was an interesting stat so I looked up a few other pitchers to see if there was a trend, and the guys I looked up gave up most of their hits on 1-1, 2-1, and 1-2 counts. He's given up 342 hits in those counts, which is 25% of the hits he's given up in his career. Pretty weird statistic considering this stat tracks every count from 0-0, 0-1, 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 1-2, 2-2, and 3-2. All of those possibilities, but 25% of his hits are from 0-1, 1-0..so I'm going to try to pay extra attention to that tonight and see what happens.
• Also worth noting that he gives up a lot of hits on the first pitch, 42% of hits given up occur in the 0-0, 1-0, or 0-1 count.

Pick to Click: Jay Bruce

I think the Reds finally take a series at Busch Stadium tonight, as Jake Westbrook has been pitching awful lately and I think LeCure or Volquez will both pitch good enough for the Reds to win. It would be a huge series win heading into Milwaukee, so let's see if we can do it!

No off topic today, but please vote in the poll, because I'm considering creating a website not on blogspot. I just want to know if you guys would consistently visit a website that had more permanent content like a profile for each Reds' player with their tendencies, as well as the current blog and maybe some other things. If you have any comments on it feel free to comment on it, email me at edlilly08@gmail.com, or hit me up on Twitter @EricLilly7.