Pinch hitting: Greg Mathews - 棒球

這是Journal News 部落格每年一月份，因為新聞少
所以會邀球迷投稿，這次投稿的是在討論王。

Pinch hitting: Greg Mathews

Our next pinch hitter is Greg Mathews, who delved into Chien-Ming Wang’s
numbers and determined it might not be such a bad thing to see him sign
elsewhere.

After growing up in New Jersey, Greg was a knuckleballer at at Springfield
College — it seems natural that he was a pitcher – and he now works as a
group sales associate at Wilmington Blue Rocks in Deleware. “In my family,
you were born a Yankee fan, going all the way back to my great-grandfather
who saw Lou Gehrig play,” Greg wrote. “I was 10 years old when Mattingly
went deep in Game 2, and Gary Thorne’s play-by-play still echoes in my
mind.”

———

On the “Wang” side of a trend

In Chien-Ming Wang’s first two full seasons as a starter, he boasted 38 wins
pitching in the American League East. His 2008 campaign started off at eight
wins and two losses before the ankle injury occurred in Houston, and he never
fully recovered, leading to his awful 2009 season.

After Wang was non-tendered this offseason, it was reported that the Yankees
wanted the opportunity to match any offer that Wang receives. Sure, his
Win/Loss record is great and he suffered the unfortunate injury, but would
it really be a good idea to bring him back?

Off to Fangraphs.com I went.

From 2006 to 2008, there were some trends that raised a red flag when looking
at a sinkerballer. During his first full season in ’06, Wang had a ground
ball rate of 62.8% and his line drive rate was 16.9%. The following year,
his GB rate fell to 58.4% and his LD rate rose to 18.3%. This was true
again in 2008, when his GB rate was down to 55% and LD rate jumped to 22.1%.
From ’06 to ’08, Wang saw a 7.8% drop in ground balls, but the negatively
trending batted ball percentages weren’t the only thing that caught my eye.

In 2008, Wang began to walk batters with more frequency.

In 2006, Wang faced 900 batters and walked 52, or one walk every 17.3 batters
faced. In 2007, he issued a walk to every 13.9 hitters and even more often in
2008 when the rate hit 11.5. This was especially evident in his five
no-decisions prior to the injury when he was walking one out of every EIGHT
batters. So not only were batters hitting the ball harder every year, Wang
was walking them at a rapidly increasing rate.

When looking at these stats, my theory is that batters are laying off of that
low sinker. The pitches that used to be pounded into the ground are now being
let go. Wang has to throw it higher in the zone and the hitters are making
better contact. These are not good trends when pitching against the
perennially tough batters of the AL East. I loved Chien-Ming Wang while he
was here, but it is time to move on without him. What do you think?

http://yankees.lhblogs.com/2010/01/20/pinch-hitting-greg-mathews/

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