The key to the W-L record after winning or losing after 5 innings isn’t that there is something important about those innings. The key is winning or losing over 5 innings, which is a majority, albeit a slight one, of the game.

I’ve seen stats that show, over the course of a season, you’ll get similar results for winning/losing after 5 innings as you would for winning/losing over the course of things like innings 3-7 or even non consecutive innings, like 1,2, 4, 6, 7.

Right, but there’s nothing particular to the inning itself. It could be the sixth or seventh if he’s efficient with his pitch count.

With Mussina, the inning is irrelevant. He just tends to fall apart as he approaches the 100 pitch mark. He also counts his own pitches, so he knows its coming and that probably compounds the problem.
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Which is probably around the 5th inning….

With Mussina, the inning is irrelevant. He just tends to fall apart as he approaches the 100 pitch mark. He also counts his own pitches, so he knows its coming and that probably compounds the problem.

Interesting, but ultimately it’s of no importance which inning the pitchers give up their runs in. They’ve still been pitching effectively enough to give a team with an offense as good as the Yankees a chance to win.

So, in my book the offense still deserves the lion’s share of the blame for how pathetic and downright uninspiring this team is to watch.

This is funny because me and a co-worker at work used to rag on Mussina the previous two years because we would say he would pitch great except for the 3-4 runs he would give up in the 5th inning all the time.

It was pretty much the joke we would make everytime he was set to pitch that night but it looks like it’s true and it’s infected Petitte now too.

Not really worried about Wang too much but maybe “Mussina’s 5th inning plague” is spreading.