In the past few days, the Noles have lost to Auburn on the road, gotten snowed out, and lost to Jacksonville (away). When compared to past incarnations of team performance, these events may seem like a sure sign of the apocalypse, but I don't ultimately place that much stock in losing the first two road games. The fact that FSU has not lost two consecutive games since 2006 is also a pretty meaningless stat. With that said, I do believe that this team may currently be weaker than the 2007 (and definitely 2008) squad- but it's still a young team with tons of potential. Since one of our chief purposes in writing this blog is to gain greater clarity of impression (a phrase I believe I'm lifting from Whelk's personal version of Luther's 95 Theses), here are some short observations about what I've seen so far...
- Tyler Holt gets on base, is fast, and is a good baserunner. For what it's worth, he also appears to be chock full of "intangibles" (meaning he's feisty and usually pumped up- I can dismiss its overall importance, but I can't not love it).
-Ohmed Danesh is a beast, and is making a serious case for playing every day if he maintains a reasonable portion of his current production. He may have a fair number of strikeouts along the way, but the balls he puts in play have pretty much all been hammered.
-Pitching is a problem. So far Gilmartin has been the only bright spot amongst starters, winning his first two starts and not giving up a lot of runs in doing so. In the bullpen, Brian Busch has absolutely dominated most of his relief appearances and appears to have some of the best stuff on the team (couple this with a quirky delivery and he makes opposing hitters appear foolish more often than not), but he's been used an awful lot. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing him in high leverage situations, but I wonder if the talk of turning him into a starter has become more than talk (hence the gradual increase in innings)? Beyond those two, I'm concerned about depth, especially in the bullpen.
-D'Vo is maybe the best athlete on the team. We knew that right? He's got the speed to leg out infield hits, and although we haven't seen it much yet, I imagine he can steal too. Still, he doesn't seem to be making terrific contact, and I'd imagine that if one were to remove his infield hits, his BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) would be relatively low.
-Rafael Lopez has shown flashes of brilliance, but also shows signs of a dude who didn't get to play last year.
-Stuart Tapley seems to have pretty good range when he's charging a ball, but little lateral movement. It's puzzling.
-The offense will probably be just fine. Granted, it's a less powerful team without Posey, Rye, and Guinn, but it's got the potential to bat 9 guys capable of putting together patient, quality, plate appearances. It's also very young, so I imagine we'll see a dip in the freakish numbers currently being put up followed by a gradual climb by some of the 2nd and 3rd year players as the season progresses.
* A few words about all this darn observing: We want stats to be a part of this discussion. As Jon "Boog" Sciambi says, the great thing about Sabermetric thought is that you can enhance your discussions of the game with factual evidence. We're getting there, and as Whelk has said, we hope to have those stats available soon. Then, instead of telling you that I think D'Vo isn't hitting that well or that Ohmed Danesh is awesome, I can point to some (hopefully) meaningful stats to illustrate the point. But we realize there's going to be a serious sample size issue. The numbers we're looking at are probably more of a barometer rather than a predictive tool. We can tell you who's got the best contact % or OPS right now, but that's not as indicative of overall ability as it would be when viewing a major leaguer's career numbers. With that said, I still think the stats we're compiling will allow for much more informed analysis than visual memories of select games. Finally, we love spreadsheets. Doesn't everyone?
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