Quote:
Originally Posted by gblowfish
Here's the current American League Pitching Stats:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/le...-leaders.shtml
No Royals starting pitcher shows up in any of the top ten of favorable stats. And for the staff in general, we have two guys -Crow and Mijeras- tied for appearances at 11.
Chen is tied for second in the AL with losses at 3, tied for second in starts at 5, and is tied for fourth in wild pitches at 2. Those are the only stats where he shows up.
Royals pitching staff is very impressive when you look at the list of wild pitches, and batters hit by pitch. We're very good at those two categories. We throw lots of wild pitches (we miss Perez) and we hit a lot of guys.
In wins, saves, ERA, strikeouts per 9 innings, innings pitched, not so much. |
No one is arguing that Chen is an ace who should be showing up in those stats. The only argument has been that Chen is a solid 3-4 starter who would have a spot in the rotation of a LOT of teams around baseball.
Duffy has been better than expected. If he doesn't have TJ surgery in his near future, he will rank respectably in K/9, (20K through 17.1 IP). If he maintains a sub-4.00 ERA all season, that's a huge step forward for him.
Hochevar has been good outside of one bad inning (that included a check-swing, bloop single with two strikes and two outs and a bases-loaded misplay of a flyball that both extended the inning). There's enough there to be optmistic the second half of 2011 was no fluke (we'll see how much it evens out over the next month or two).
Chen has been himself.
Mendoza sucks.
Sanchez has been disappointing.
Swapping out the dozer for Paulino is going to help, but any way you slice it... the Royals needed to sign one more pitcher in the offseason. Somehow.