Is Wang doomed to failure?
Here's some historical context on pitchers low strikeout pitchers like Wang and whether they can sustain success over the long haul.
An excerpt:
"But what’s of greater concern, perhaps than Wang’s other-worldly awful start is that Wang’s success up to this point in his career has been unusual. Specifically, Wang has succeeded up to now despite an unusually low strikeout rate. This may seem like statistical arcana, but in fact there is no better predictor of a pitcher’s long-term durability and success than his ability to whiff batters. This doesn’t mean that every great pitcher has to be Nolan Ryan. Future first-ballot Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux was not a flame-thrower, but even he managed to strikeout a very respectable six batters per nine innings over the course of his long career. But virtually all very successful pitchers have struck out more than five batters per nine innings. Even soft-tossing 96-year old Jamie Moyer (OK, he’s only 46) punched out 5.4 batters per nine innings last season when he helped the Phillies to the World Series title. And, virtually every pitcher below that figure, even if they enjoyed success for some period of time, found that their ability to consistently retire major league hitters was short-lived."
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4 comments
Comments
Shakes head......
Wang has a low K ratio, cuz he is not a K pitcher. He is a sinkerball pitcher. He throws in 90% of the time and he throws in well.
He was not a fluke, he proved that over his entire career. He was dominant in more than one year.
K ratio’s don’t mean everything. Its like K’s with hitters, you can strike out a ton of times but still have Ryan Howard…..
by FreeBradshaw on Apr 20, 2009 3:52 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs
Agreed . . .
The whole basis of his pitching game is infield ground outs. I mean he’s coming back from an injury so that may have affected his mechanics a bit . . . I mean a guy can have a fluke year and then just vanish into obscurity but dang didn’t Wang have two and a half solid years before he got hurt? He’ll get it work out.
by seanzee08 on Apr 20, 2009 4:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs
he can live with low K rates
if he gets grounders like he normally does. but right now he’s giving up fly balls AND not striking anyone out. it’s a bad combo, but if he can at least get back to inducing grounders, he should be ok.
by Travis G on Apr 20, 2009 4:35 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

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