With his Vs. LHP splits being such a small number of ABs, maybe he’s being Carlos Pena’d(they said he couldn’t hit against LHP last year and when used correctly..he tore them up to)

However, you’ve seen him more than we have(last time I remember him playing the Rays was in his Toronto Days in which he played Gabe Ruth in Spring Training to only fall completely on his face)

yeah the data actually kind of sucks. The worst system right now is in Cincinnati so if you want to look at Gallardo’s first start you are kind of screwed. For some reason there has been more of an uproar this year from what I have read about people complaining that the data sucks but it actually was just as bad last year. That is why I spent such a long time doing data corrections in the off season. If you look at my player cards from 2007 they should be spot on. Sadly, the data set isn’t complete yet and won’t be until several interleague series have been played. So I won’t be able to run my correction code on the data until that unless I do something fancy and come up with AL corrections and NL corrections.

Ok that is the bad news but there is good news. Near home plate the cameras appear to be incredibly accurate. Sportvision claims to be accurate to within 1/2 an inch and that is about right from the numbers I have crunched. So if there is anything you should trust it is strike zone stuff assuming the 2008 data is broken in exactly the same way as the 2007 data is.

As for the Braun AB. The two questionable strikes are the two pitchers almost overlapping just below the strike zone. Now were these pitches strikes? By the MLB definition no they were low but there were close. Compared to what most umpires call, they appear to definitely be balls. You can look for yourself at MLB’s gameday site here. Click on inning 1 and then Braun’s name and it should show you the sequence. Interestingly, the first pitch of the at bat was called a ball but it was at almost exactly the same height but a bit more outside. I too thought the two questionable calls were more outside but sometimes the camera angle we get can skew things.

Almost all of those called strikes off the plate came to left handed batters. For some reason umpires really give the outside corner to pitchers when they are facing lefties. Conversely, most of the balls called on pitches that were in the zone but on the right corner were when lefties were up. It is like the strike zone actually shifts about half a foot outside when lefties are batting. Don’t ask me the reason for that, I have no idea.