The Sheet-Out

[44Fishy]

I remember we talked about this at some point last year and he did it again last night-

 

Sheets has an uncanny ability to throw a complete game that would be a shut out, except for giving up only a solo homer, just like last night-

 

We were looking for a good name...The Sheet-Out

[crewcrazy]

I think the Sheet-Out is a result of nearly every team having one guy who has astronomical career splits against Sheets, for whatever reason. There's always one guy like Xavier Nady or Jeff Kent or Derrek Lee that always seem to hit that solo HR to avoid the shutout.

 

He did pitch a pretty good game last night, though. The strikeouts weren't coming towards the end of the game, but I think that's more a result of the Pirates starting to swing early in the count instead of working themselves into 2-strike holes. Definitely the kind of start I was hoping to see after that last Dodgers start.

[rluzinski]

I think the Sheet-Out is a result of nearly every team having one guy who has astronomical career splits against Sheets, for whatever reason.

 

I don't think so. There is always going to be some batters who have a great splits against every pitcher. Most of that stuff is just small sample randomness. Look at Clemens:

 

http://www.baseball-reference.com/pi/p-pvb.cgi?n1=clemero02#choice=&bats=&minPA2=0&minPA=0&orderbydir=DESC&orderbydirb=ASC&n1=clemero02&as=pitcher&year_game=career&opp_id=&orderby=PA&orderbyb=Name

 

Some batters have done much better against him than their career stats would have suggested and we'd EXPECT that from just luck. I doubt Sheets has more batters that "own" him more than any other pitcher (it's certainly worth investigating, though).

 

Now, Sheets is a fly ball pitcher, so he's going to give up his share of HRs. Because of that, I think there is some merit to the "Sheet-out". About 6 months ago, I tried to prove someone wrong when they said that Sheets, for as good as he is, doesn't get as many shutout and 1 run starts as a comparably good pitcher (ERA wise). I found that, at least for shutouts, that fool was absolutely correct (was it backcatcher? I can't remember).