Please excuse my obsessiveness, my obsessiveness, my obsessiveness

I just couldn't put aside my curiosity about a possible trend in Felix Hernandez' pitching performance: to my eyes he often has a stellar first inning followed by a less effective, much so, second.  That pattern is certainly what he has shown in his first spring training starts.  I needed to look at data to confirm what I thought I was seeing.

So, I looked at the first two innings of his 27 starts in 2018.  In 11 of his starts, the first two innings were the same... the good news: in nine of those games he yielded zero runs in both the first and second.  That also means two of those games he gave up runs in both innings.  He got better in 9 games, but that's not good news at all, because that means he gave up one or more runs in the first to improve.  In seven games, consistent with my concern, he had a good first inning and a worst second.

Think about that... 11 not-so-good starts, seven more that started well but slipped in the second... 18 out of 27 (67 per cent) where things are not so good or worse two innings into the game.  Not confidence building.  So two-thirds of the time Felix starts you can expect to see runs scored on you before you get out of the second.

...........

Starting to worry. Where is Mallex, when are we going to see him play?  When is J.P. Crawford going to mature into an major league player.  Right now he's just hitting his weight.  Beckham is a big drop off at short after Segura.  I was hoping Crawford would challenge for the position.

Feeling good.  Kyle Seager looks really good, nice comeback.  Hate to say it, but Vogelbach is playing well.  Shed Long?  Oh yeah

............

Bellarmine lost in the consolation round to Kentridge 70 to 60.  That was the third time Kentridge has beaten the Lions this year so they must be better, but oh did B Prep play hard.  Down by a ten-point margin the end of the first quarter, they fought back hard.  Mid-quarter of the third they pulled within three, but Kentridge was just too big and they held them off.  A 22-7 season is really good, especially when three of the losses are to the same team.  Bellarmine should be proud to take away a fifth-place finish from the state 4A championship.