Blangraphs

With the Phillies off today, excitement is growing about the first Joe Blanton start of the season. The Mets have skipped a beat in their rotation in a panicked attempt to make Wednesday's contest a fair fight. Opening day starter Mike Pelfrey (0-1, 10.38 ERA) is set to oppose Blanton. In other Blanton news, a compilation of recent Joe quotes can be found on Google.

Blanton fact of the day: #2 hitters have a worse slugging percentage against Blanton (.313) than #9 hitters (.314). Watch out, Willie Harris.

Oswalt v. Bud

We here at Blangraphs embrace all baseball teams (except the Braves, Mets, and Yankees). So I'm going to take this opportunity to liveblog one of our favorite pitchers opening day start. World Series MVP Livan Hernandez!

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.

12:49 PM: Joe Blanton getting ready to start his first second spring training game of 2011 against Pittsburgh in Bradenton, Florida.  Joe will throw his first pitch in the bottom of the 1st.
12:56 PM: The game is scheduled to begin at 1:05.  Blanton will face Jose Tabata, Pedro Ciriaco, and Neil Walker in the first.


continued in the live blog above

The entire sports world has been buzzing about Clifton P. Lee.  Since he signed on at Philadelphia, many have already declared that the Phils now have the best 5 man rotation in baseball, consisting of Joe Blanton, onetime SEC strikeout leader, Cliff Lee, Cy Young winner, Cole Hamels, World Series MVP, Roy Oswalt, a good pitcher and capable outfielder, as well as a promising young talent, Roy Halladay, who showed a lot of upside last season with his Cy Young win, playoff no-hitter, and perfect game.