Chien-Ming Wang
Posted by Andy on April 24, 2009
Wang might be the nicest guy in the majors but he's off to the worst start of all players this year.
Since 1954, here are all the teams with at least 3 games among their first 12 where the starting pitcher went no more than 4 innings and gave up at least 7 earned runs:
Tm Year Games Link to Individual Games +---+----+-----+-------------------------+ MIN 1994 4 Ind. Games SFG 2001 3 Ind. Games SDP 2006 3 Ind. Games NYY 2009 3 Ind. Games BOS 2006 3 Ind. Games
If you click through on each "individual games" link, you'll see that the Twins had 4 different pitchers "achieve" the feat. The Giants had 3 different guys. The Padres got 2 such games from Dewon Brazelton and one from Jake Peavy of all guys. The Red Sox had 3 different guys.
Only the Yankees had the "feat' achieved by just 1 guy in these three starts:
Cnt Player Date Tm Opp GmReslt App,Dec IP H R ER BB SO HR Pit Str GmSc IR IS BF AB 2B 3B IBB HBP SH SF GDP SB CS Pk BK WP ERA +----+-----------------+-------------+---+----+-------+---------+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+----+--+--+--+--+--+--+---+---+--+--+---+--+--+--+--+--+------+ 1 Chien-Ming Wang 2009-04-08 NYY @BAL L 5-7 GS-4 ,L 3.2 9 7 7 3 0 1 73 40 12 21 17 4 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 2 0 0 0 17.18 2 Chien-Ming Wang 2009-04-13 NYY @TBR L 5-15 GS-2 ,L 1 6 8 8 3 1 0 61 34 7 12 8 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 72.00 3 Chien-Ming Wang 2009-04-18 NYY CLE L 4-22 GS-2 ,L 1.1 8 8 8 0 1 1 52 34 7 12 12 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 54.00
Those are some really ugly stat lines, especially for a guy who's had so much success so far in his career as one of the top game-winner from the last few seasons. I hope there's some sort of mild physical issue that Wang needs to recover from and he'll get back to his competitive form. I'm a big fan of international players in MLB and it's far too soon for Wang to leave the field.
April 24th, 2009 at 8:29 am
Wang is the only pitcher since '54 to have 3 consecutive starts with a Game Score of 12 or worse.
April 24th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Is there any way you could bump that contest I set up a week or two ago back up to the top? Right now only 5 people entered, but I think it would be fun to get more the the Stat of the Day readers involved. Thanks.
April 24th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
BoondockSaint: I plan to submit an entry (albeit late); I've just been busy with finals at work and haven't had time to "process" all the categories yet. Hope to post my submissions some time next week!