For several weeks I've maintained that the Twins likely do need to trade for a reliever, or do something drastic like move Francisco Liriano to that role, because thi in-house candidates have good enough "stuff" to handle the jib themselves. But what I haven't done is check out their strikeout rates. Let's remedy that.
K/9 is a pretty good back-of-the-napkin measurement of dominance. As a benchmark, a 6 is average and a 9 is great. Joe Nathan, for instance, had a k/9 rate last year of 11.7. Here are the rest of the guys.
Matt Guerrier - 5.5
Jesse Crain - 7.5
Jose Mijares - 8.0
Jon Rauch - 8.0 (with Twins)
Pat Neshek - 9.5 (back in 2007)
And the new guy, Alex Burnett? Well, it was only AA, but he posted an 8.5.
These aren't great, but they're good enough. The Twins will fond someone who can do the job.
-- Posted From My iPhone
Sunday, April 04, 2010
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4 comments:
I don't know why the percentage of outs a pitcher gets by strike out is measure of "dominance". It certainly is to the extent it reflects the percentage of batters they strike out. But if they are giving up a lot of hits, it doesn't make any difference how they are getting people out. A fly ball, ground ball or strike out all work the same unless they are getting double plays on the ground balls.
Dude, spell check before you post. It's hard to decipher sometimes.
Strikeouts are important for late-inning situations. Often, you need to get an out on a play that can not advance a runner. Whether the K is more important for setup men (who often come into games with runners on base) than closers (who often start the 9th with no runners on) is another topic.
And Dude, he posted from his phone. Give him a break.
Why not measure K's per PA? It seems like those numbers would be yet a better measure of effectiveness than K/9. I know you can use WHIP in combo to get a feel but for example, Liriano seems like he's striking a lot out but he's also still giving up base runners. I bet his K's per PA are much more close to pedestrian than his K's per 9.
MC
Just something I've been thinking about of late.
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