Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Redefining the “Clean Inning”

by Jason Franz

 The Dickson Baseball Dictionary defines a clean inning as an inning pitched where the pitcher does not give up a hit or a walk.

It’s been no secret that the saving grace of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ success has been their bullpen. While nowhere near perfect, they have been far stronger than merely solid. Let’s say a hardness factor of at least a 7. The D-Backs’ pen currently is the best in the bigs with a league low ERA of 2.53 (Houston is next at 2.63) with a fairly paltry 8 blown saves to the 24 saves converted, 19 by closer Brad Boxberger.

But the two big horses giving the bullpen cart the finger and running to the hill to dominate their inning or two of pitching have been Japanese import Yoshi Hirano and “The Beard,” Archie Bradley.

Hirano has been mowing every comer down, currently sitting with a 1.25 ERA, 33 strikeouts and a stoopid WHIP of 0.97. But the cleanest of his clean inning stats is that he has pitched 24 straight outings without giving up a single run. He has only surrendered one extra-base hit since May 6 – ONE. He has forced eight double plays, which puts him atop the NL for releivers. He has been as lock down as lock down can possibly come.

Bradley has been almost as solid, proving a perfect 8th inning option and developing into one of the very best relievers in baseball. Bradley’s numbers include a 2.08 ERA, 0.95 WHIP and 3 saves. And he’s still one of the most charismatic characters in the league. I keep waiting to see him pull a Sweet Lou Dunbar and start pulling gizmos out of his soup catcher.

But Bradley recently sent the notion of a clean inning the opposite way. While sitting in on a recent edition of the Yahoo! Sports MLB Podcast, The Beard was asked about the barfing episode by the Brewers’ Adrian Houser, a former roommate of Bradley’s. As only Archie can, he went on to top that story with a little on-the-field incident of his own. 

“So, it’s a 2-2 count, and I’m like, ‘Man, I have to pee. I have to go pee.’ So, I run in our bathroom real quick, I’m ready to go. I’m trying to pee and I actually shit my pants. Like right before I’m about to go in the game, I pooped my pants. I’m like ‘Oh my gosh.’ I know I’m a pitch away from going in the game, so I’m scrambling to clean myself up. I get it cleaned up the best I can, button my pants up, and our bullpen coach Mike Fetters says, ‘Hey, you’re in the game.’ So, I’m jogging into the game to pitch with poop in my pants essentially. It was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been on the mound. And I actually had a good inning. I had a clean inning, and I walked in the dugout and I was like, ‘Guys, I just shit myself.’ They didn’t believe me, then the bullpen came in and they’re like ‘Oh my God, you had to see this’.”



As our founder and spirit guide Neal Pollack will tell you, poop plays. And a good story about shitting one’s pants while on the job will get clicks forever.

at
The Teams

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)