The Pro Yakyu Report 1.25 - Starters vs. Relievers Part II

Again, there was a great follow up comment on last week's Report by Azza-san. He (or she?) was wondering how Blanco and Luna fared against starters as opposed to relievers. That, in turn, leads to an excellent follow-up to the Starters vs. Relievers Report of episode number 22, but from a batter's perspective.



The raw data used in this episode can be found here [Google Drive].

I'd like to know what interesting patterns you find.

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Pocket Calendar
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Inter-league makeup game(s) this week.

June 17: Japan Baseball Weekly Podcast featuring an interview with Rakuten's Casey McGehee. John and Jim also plan on discussing "Ball-gate" and chatter about Rami-chan possibly being traded to a Pacific League team.

Thanks for addressing my question, and I am definitely a bloke

I find the statistics interesting with certain batters, and it varies from batter to batter and the reasons why some batters do better against starters and some with relievers.

Some relievers are probably more specialised than others and some relievers just aren't that good, there are always some relievers, the moment i see their name or hear their name announced i know that anyone will score off them, then there are some who i think ... lights out!

McGhee is an interesting one as you said, I have only seen him a couple of times so I am not really qualified to judge so like you i am interested in hearing someone explain about him. If this had come out before the Japanese Baseball Weekly Podcast interview was recorded, maybe John could have raised this with him

Being a BayStars' fan, I know all too well the feeling of dread when a particular (Yamaguchi, cough, cough) pitcher is called in for relief. Sasaki, before heading to Seattle, was Mr. Lights Out. It was said that the opposition considered games in Yokohama to be 8 inning affairs, because they certainly weren't going to get anything going if the BayStars (or Taiyo Whales) had the lead in the 9th off of Sasaki.

I had the same thought about the podcast's guest when I heard it. I had already recorded everything except the Japan Baseball Weekly Podcast when John sent me the note about what they were planning for this week's show. I'm hoping that maybe there was something in the interview to shed some light on McGhee's two sides.

Thanks again for the great questions.