The Annotated This Day in Baseball History

Here's a fun fact: Christ Carpenter, last year's NL Cy Young winner, has lost five games each of the last three years. His losses have been holding steady, while virtually everything else for him has been improving. In those three years, his ERA has gone from 5.28 to 3.46 to last year's 2.83; while his inning total has gone from 73 and a third to 183 all the way up to 241 and two-thirds. Perhaps most importantly for Chris, his win totals against those five losses have gone from four to sixteen to twenty-one.

That's more trivia than anything else, Carpenter has always had a lot of potential and it appears Dave Duncan (his pitching coach in St. Louis ) has finally helped him tap into it. The consistent loss number is a fun contrast to his other statistics, all of which are drifting upwards in a favorable way. Carpenter has a tough road to hoe if he's going to continue that trend, but so far this year he's 3-1, 1.91 in thirty-three innings, so I guess anything is possible. I wouldn't put my money on it, however.

# posted by Richard Barbieri @ 11:00 AM