Santana starts. Three hours later, K-Rod finishes. The pennant is coming home to Citi Field.

And what's their secret weapon?
They finally have a big Putz.

I love the early days of the season when all the coverage has to use headshots where half the players are wearing the wrong caps.

Well there goes our undefeated season. It's good to get the suspense over with early.

GO DUCKS!!!!!!!!

Who?

*checks rotation of the earth*

The Dodgers beat Peavy! The wonders never cease.

You know, I've always thought it was lame that a run that scores due to a fielding error by the pitcher is considered an unearned run. I look at E.R.A. to mean "average number of runs scored due to this pitcher being on the mound." The pitcher himself making the error would count towards that, in my world.

I always took ERA to indicate the number of runs scored due to that pitcher's pitching. Which would be why runs scored on the pitcher's errors would not be included.

I know that's the reason. I just think it would make more sense to include runs due to his own errors. I mean, ERA is about assessing your chances of winning if, all other things being equal, it's that guy on the mound vs. someone else. It's supposed to say "we expect the other team to score X # of runs, on average, if he's pitching." It seems logical to me to include otherwise unearned runs that are his fault.

In the end, it's rarely more than a run or two a year for any pitcher, so it's not like it matters. It's just always seemed like including those runs would make ERA a more complete statistic.

I never took that to be the purpose of ERA. It seems to me that it is and should be a measure of strictly pitching effectiveness. There are other statistics to measure fielding. And still other statistics to assess overall value.

In the NL, at least, a pitcher's batting affects there ability to win games as well. Should that be factored into ERA?