Blangraphs

Joe Blanton pitched a perfect game* today in the minors.




















































(if a game is defined as one inning)

Joe Blanton has not pitched since May 14th against the Braves. Even in that game his elbow was bothering him and he gave up two home runs over 5 innings. The Phillies ultimately lost 3-5. Since then he has been on the DL with as far as I can tell has only been publicly diagnosed as "crankiness". He has since been resting his elbow in the hopes that it would heal itself but after a bullpen a few days ago he felt the same symptoms. It's a shame really as Blanton was predicted to win 15-30 games by 100% of Blangraphs readers.

Here is what Blanton had to say about his injury. "I think I'm just trying to stay attuned with what's going on," Blanton said. "But it feels the same as it did before. It's not, 'Oh, maybe you just have some soreness.' It's the same as it was. So the rest period didn't work, so we'll see where we go from here."

Any future updates on Blanton's health will be covered and posted here on Blangraphs.

Find all the injured Phillies pitchers! Lidge, Contreras, Madson, Oswalt, and Blanton.

Click to enlarge

Blanton's new game face

In preparation for his next start against the Mets Joe Blanton decided to take the day off and...

Went snorkeling!

Does it sometimes seem like when you sit down to watch Blanton pitch that he always gives up lots of runs?
Yeah we noticed that, too. As great a pitcher as Blanton is there are somethings that even he really can't control such as the bloopers that fall in and the "clutch" hits that other teams get against him. Blanton really has had some bad luck to start the year.

 First let's look at his BABIP- which is 3rd highest in the league at .357 I think a usually BABIP hovers around .300. The ball is finding the hole more often than expected when Big Joe is on the mound resulting in more hits and more baserunners.

Next let's look at LOB% which is 63.5% for Blanton right now. A league average LOB% is ~72%. Meaning that 8.5% more runners have scored than we would expect. His Hr/Fb rate is almost exactly league average which means he isn't leaving especially juicy meatballs up there.

It's not like he's Kyle Kendrick up their with K's either. Joe has a respectable 6.29 K/9 and a good BB/K rate of 2.22 (for comparison Cliff is 1.11, but it's never really a fair comparison with Cliff.). Also Joe's groundball rate is among the leaders with a GB% of 55.6%. More than half of the balls hit off Joe are grounders.

So somewhat unexpectedly Blanton is putting together the peripherals for a very good season. He has already put together .4 more WAR than fan favorite JA Happ has for Houston this year and posted an xFIP (basically expected ERA) lower than Tim Hudson, Yovanni Gallardo, and Matt Cain.

Also word on the street is that he has developed an ABP.

By the hammer of Blan!

Blanton looks to mow down the Padres tonight

Blanton goes again tonight against the Greinke-less-Gallardo-floppers. Joe is looking to rebound a bit from his last 2 starts that as we all know have not gone according to plan. The Brewers are anchored by a strong offense, and also someone named Mcgehee which I'm pretty sure he just spelled wrong on his contract. Liveblog at game time.

Joltin' Joe will brew his own beer, thank you very much

Friends tonight is a very special night. Two of the greatest pitchers of our generation are going at it in a battle for the division crown. Livan v. Blanton. An epic battle of 80 something mph fastballs vs. the "Blanton Blazer" coming in at 89.4 mph. Set your alarms for 7:05 est. It truly is a clash of the titans tonight.

Blanton to the left, Livan to the right

This graph demonstrates Kentucky Joe's malice with the stick at the plate relative to other well known stars of the diamond. I think the graph pretty much speaks for itself.

Joe Blanton is often described as an "innings eater". This is usually regarded as a good quality is an otherwise ho-hum pitcher. But no one has analyzed the numbers like we do here at BG. From just 6 of Blanton's starts this spring we were able to analyze just how incredible an innings eater we can project Blanton to be this summer. Look at this graph.

Using the equation derived from this graph we estimate Joe Blanton will pitch 224 innings in his 30th start. And assuming he is able to reach his average of about 30 starts...


Blanton is expected to pitch 1605.57 innings this year! Incredible.