Baseball is a sport in which there is truly a stat for everything. And by putting statistical value on everything, we are attempting to understand a sport in which failing 70 percent of the time means you’re pretty dang good.
But there is one area that I will never be able to understand – the mystery that is run support.
Run support is, simply, the amount of runs a team scores for their pitchers. There are times a team scores a lot of runs for one guy, not so much for another.
Take the Royals this year. So far, the Royals are averaging about seven runs per start whenever Luke Hochevar is on the mound. Not surprisingly, he has a pretty good win/loss record.
The flip side of this coin is Zack Greinke. The Royals ace gets less than three runs per start of support. Not so surprisingly, his win/loss record is not so good.
But why do some pitchers get better support than others?
The simple answer is, “Well, since Greinke’s the ace, he goes up against other aces.” While Greinke has definitely faced his fair share of quality pitchers, he doesn’t always line up against an ace.
Take his last two starts. Ian Snell is far from Seattle’s ace. And while Wade Davis is having a nice year, he is not Tampa Bay’s ace. The Royals scored a combined two runs in those starts.
Meanwhile, this is a team that has won 18 times Greinke has taken the mound in the last 39 Greinke starts, despite him having an ERA of less than 2.30. It’s sickening when you look at it.
I still remember in 2003 when Chris George was flat horrible on the mound. He had a 7.11 ERA – but the Royals kept winning when he started. He won nine games that year because he got a ridiculous amount of run support.
So we still have yet to – as far as I know – find a way to measure WHY some pitchers are able to get run support and why others aren’t.
But if we do, I’m sure Zack Greinke would love to know why that is.
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