Twins Offense 2009 vs 2008

A lot has been made about the Twins offensive struggles this season, and especially the dip in their batting average with RISP, so I thought I'd do a quick compare and contrast between this season and last season through 21 games.

2009                                   2008

W-L: 10-11                         W-L: 10-11

RS: 85                                 RS: 76

RA: 113                               RA: 85

Shocking, isn't it? We've actually scored 9 more runs this year than last year at the same point in the season. And despite the atrocious run differential of this year, we have the identical record from 2008.

So what gives? Is batting average with RISP truly the primary culprit? Well obviously not, at least not in this small sample comparison. No, what has doomed the Twins more than anything this year has been, 1) the bullpen, and 1B) the starting pitching.

I couldn't figure out how to get the numbers of just the first 21 games of last year's pitchers, so I'm using all of 2008 (just an FYI).

2009                                                               2008

                       ERA         whip                                                 ERA           whip

Starters         5.13        1.36                        Starters            4.32           1.36

Relievers      6.29        1.56                        Relievers         3.91           1.35

In a nutshell, last year's bullpen was better than the starters, and starters were pretty good. In Twinsland that equals more wins than less. This year the bullpen is noticeably worse (thus far) than the starters, who (thus far) have been not very good. That suggests that our 10-11 record may be a bit flukey, but it also may suggest that once the pitching improves moderately our record will improve to +.500 ball.

The demotions of guys like Humber will definitely help (he was very bad) the relief situation, and the addition of (thus far) solid performances from Mijares and Morillo will also help right the bullpen. More importantly, as Perkins normalizes (the SP numbers this year would be a lot worse with him) back to his career norms, the improvement of Slowey and Liriano will help a lot. Throw in modest improvements from Blackburn and especially Baker and the SP staff begins to look a lot better.

The one question I have for people who understand these numbers a lot better is how is it that the starters have the identical whip this year as last year, but are allowing .81 ERs more this year (sorry, don't have FIP data available)? Luck? Something with FB/GB%? Line drive rates? Please discuss.