I have a little bit of a need-to-be-right thing going on. I'm not always right, and in fact, (and you'll find this out after you have teenagers) I'm rarely right at all. However, I at least like to know what's what, and if (and when) I am wrong, I really want to know what the facts are. I was just sure I remembered Marquis being very up side/down side when it came to his pitching during the first half versus the second half of the year. Then Cardinal70 very respectfully disagreed with me and I felt the need to figure out which of us was right.
Now, admittedly, I'm not a numbers girl. I made a D in geometry in high school and I had to take college algebra twice to pass. I can do basic calculations, but sometimes I need my fingers to add. And no matter what it is, I probably am going to want to write it down before it makes any sense. I'm also slightly dyscalculic (which is like the math version of dyslexic), and when I see a lot of numbers together they all kind of swim around the page. Having said this, I did do a little numbers crunching (thanks to Baseball-Reference for doing the hard work) about our friend Jason's splits.
I found this:
2000 - no starts
2001 - 38 G / 16 starts
2002 - 22 G / 22 starts
2003 - 21 G / 2 starts
2004 - 32 G / 32 starts
2005 - 33 G / 32 starts
2006 - 33 G / 33 starts
2007 - 34 G / 33 starts
2008 - 29 G / 28 starts
I focused on the years he started the majority of the time.
................. ERA ............. W-L ......... team's W-L
2002
1st half .... 3.95 .............. 6-4 ................ 8-4
2nd half ... 6.97 .............. 2-5 ................ 3-7
2004
1st half .... 3.88 .............. 9-4 ............... 11-6
2nd half ... 3.52 .............. 6-3 ................ 6-9
2005
1st half .... 3.89 .............. 8-6 ................ 9-9
2nd half ... 4.41 .............. 5-8 ................ 6-9
2006
1st half .... 5.55 .............. 11-6 .............. 12-7
2nd half ... 6.72 .............. 3-10 .............. 3-11
2007
1st half .... 3.67 .............. 6-5 ............... 12-7
2nd half ... 5.73 .............. 6-4 ................ 8-7
2008
1st half .... 4.44 .............. 6-5 ................ 10-7
2nd half ... 4.66 .............. 5-4 ................ 7-6
career (inlcuding all seasons and all games whether he started or not because I'm too lazy to go through and figure out the pinpoints)
1st half .... 4.25 .............. 49-33
2nd half ... 4.93 .............. 30-37
I'm not sure this proves anything one way or another except that there was a pretty pronounced difference in 2006, and that may be what I was thinking of. Oh, and that I'm fairly neurotic.
Thanks for the inspiration, C70!
