A Saber-Slanted Baseball Community

Listening to Dead Kennedys while writing up another chapter of comments for Baseball Prospectus 2011.

The Rangers' seven-game winning streak comes to a crashing halt via a one-hit shutout and a three-game sweep by the Tigers. Still, they're 13-6 this month, and for all the talk about their upgraded defense masking a pitching staff whose performance hasn't improved radically, the staff has put up a 3.30 ERA with 11 quality starts this month. Of course, striking out a hair under five per nine during that span doesn't bode terribly well for a repeat.

DL: When Jack Morris' Hall of Fame worthiness is debated, a common theme is that Morris "pitched to the score." Do you believe there is such a thing as pitching to the score?

BB: No, I don't. I went out there and wanted to pitch a shutout every time, so my score was zero. That was my cup of tea. If I gave up a run... I remember Sandy Koufax saying one time that he thought no-hitter every time he walked out there. If he gave up a hit, then he thought shutout. If he gave up a run, then he thought win. Being a Koufax admirer growing up, that's kind of what my attitude was, to go out there and put zeros on the board and hopefully your team can score you some runs and you win. If you give up a home run, or if you give up one run in the first, if you're going to lose, lose 1-0. That's the way you should approach it.