Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 17, 2008
To Strikeout or Not to Strikeout

Chien-Ming Wang worked on new pitches yesterday and struck out seven batters in 4 1/3 innings. Still, Wang doesn't like the strikeouts:

He claimed his performance against the Indians won't deter him from using his sinker. "Everything is good," Wang said.

Someone joked that he would start to get more strikeouts, like yesterday.

"No," Wang said. "Ground balls, still. Strikeouts take too many pitches."

I like the idea of Wang increasing his number of strikeouts, but he does have a point about being efficient.


Posted by David Pinto at 07:50 AM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

As a Red Sox fan, thank goodness he's an idiot (and apparently his manager is too). You know what else takes too many pitches? Giving up runs. Which is hard to do when your K/9 is like 13.

Posted by: Mike at March 17, 2008 08:17 AM

Exactly. That's why Wang gives up fewer runs than Curt Schilling, while getting far fewer strikeouts.

Hmmm. Who's the "idiot" again?

Posted by: James at March 17, 2008 08:48 AM

I've seen the numbers on Wang and when there are no runners on base his strike outs are low and then they spike when there are men on base. This way he uses less pitches and can go for the K when he really needs it and can't rely on ground balls.

Posted by: Matt at March 17, 2008 09:24 AM

"I've seen the numbers on Wang and when there are no runners on base his strike outs are low and then they spike when there are men on base."

For his career, he gets a K every 9.3 PAs with the bases empty, and one every 10.4 PAs with men on. Which would kind of be, uh, the exact opposite of what Matt said.

Posted by: dan at March 17, 2008 10:27 AM

Mike get real. This guy has had an ERA+ in the 120s the past two seasons, averaging over 200 innings and 19 wins per year, which is better than Beckett I might add. Yeah, he should really change his approach because it obviously isn't working.

Posted by: Ben at March 17, 2008 12:28 PM

I'm not sure what this has to do with Schilling... But regarding the 120 ERA+, that's good. Unless it could be 140 with a simple change in mentality. Then it's not so good.

And why are you comparing him to Beckett? I know why you picked the past TWO seasons... but do you really think Wang is going to do better than Beckett this year?

Posted by: Mike at March 17, 2008 01:36 PM

Compare him to Roy Halladay who is also a dominant ground ball pitcher who purposely goes for the ground out vs the strike out.

Beckett strikes out his fair share but he can't keep going out and needing 110 pitches to get through 6 or 7 innings. Roy Halladay pitched a 10 inning complete game last season needing only 107 pitches.

Posted by: Andrew at March 17, 2008 04:03 PM

"As a Red Sox fan, thank goodness he's an idiot (and apparently his manager is too). You know what else takes too many pitches? Giving up runs. Which is hard to do when your K/9 is like 13."

He's an idiot because he wants to be more efficient with his pitches? Your logic is undeniable like the computer in IRobot I guess lol.

Posted by: raymagnetic ™ at March 17, 2008 05:06 PM

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that Red Sox-Yankee fan flame wars on the internet are more idiotic than Wang and his grouball strategy.

Posted by: Schteeve. at March 18, 2008 12:21 PM

Mel Stottlemyre had a very nice career despite not being a strikeout pitcher. I'll be quite happy if Wang's career parallels Mel's (only with Wang getting the run support Mel didn't).

Posted by: Mike S. at March 19, 2008 12:57 PM
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