LINK 

Hey, Wolfy, could we replace the mailbox icon, top right, with a Panda graphic linking to Russ' site?  :-)  I'm sure he will bitterly resent the association with D-O-V but there's little he can do about it.  There's no law against hyperlinking.

People always spell it "Panda" and they aren't too far off … Russ looks meek, cuddly, and the last thing you want to do is put your fingers in his mouth …

Padna's Ponderings contains a mix of baseball and (near-detectovision) philosophy and politics, and as such makes kind of a neat tangent to D-O-V … from my point-of-view, anyway.

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=== CHIEN-MING WANG ===

The movement is afoot to replace HR ratio with G/F ratio as The Third Outcome.  The three outcomes being K's, BB's, and HR's, all of which depend totally on the pitcher, not on the fielders.

Substituting G/F ratio for HR ratio is a little bit like swapping out JJ Putz for Julio Mateo.  As you might have surmised if you've read this corner before, Dr. D objects to this trend in analysis.  As far as he knows, he is the only one who so objects … LOL.  Out on a limb by my lonesome?  We got 'em right where we want 'em.

Earlier this year, Sean Green came up to the M's running very high groundball ratios, which caused a stir of excitement … Dr. D firmly advised watching to see just how little groundball ratio is worth, by its ownself.  Two weeks later, the crowd had wandered away …

Chien-Ming Wang is a 3K pitcher who is (at the moment) running a nice ERA, a nice xFIP, and who lives lower than the Underminer.  In one series of starts beginning mid-May, Wang ran these GB/FB ratios:

05/12 Oak - 17-2 (seventeen groundball outs, two flyball outs)

05/17 Tex - 18-4

05/22 Bos - 16-5

05/27 KCR - 18-4

06/03 Det - 9-3 (knocked out)

It's not much different lately — his last 5 starts, Wang has run a series of GB ratios that are, like, 19-4, 21-4, 103-2, stuff like that.

But as Green was a micro exhibit A for the uselessness of G/F ratio in isolation (unlike the useFULness of K/9, BB/9, and HR/9 on their own), Wang will be macro exhibit B.  Two years from now, he'll be a footnote in baseball history, or pitching for Tampa, which is the same thing I guess.

……………..

The best career that Wang could possibly have, even in dreamland, is that of Scott Erickson, who had two good years before people caught on, and nuked him till he glowed.

But even Erickson's K rates were much higher than Wang's.

What happens to guys like Erickson, who have super-sinkers, is that ML hitters get the read on the movement of the pitch and then start tracking it better.  Notice that Erickson started giving up HR's after a few years, and after the low HR rate was gone, he had nothing going for him.

………………..

Billy Swift was just about the best-case scenario for a pure sinkerball (no strikeout) pitcher.  Wang's sinker looks a lot like Swift's.  Swift however did throw a tilted slider, a forkball, and a curve, mixed his pitches reasonably well off the super-sinker.  He got 4.5 - 5.0 strikeouts a game, not 3.0.

Still, Wang's sinking fastball is a beauty.  No doubts there.

……………….

Guys like Brandon Webb and Kevin Brown *combine* heavy fastballs with vicious stuff, and that's another subject.  But heavy sinking fastballs combined with lukewarm stuff?  Nah.

It might take the league 6 more starts to triangulate Wang's stuff, or 26 more starts, or the Mariners might bash him tonight.  But Wang is a short-timer.  If the Yankees are getting offers, they better pounce.

My $0.02,

Dr D