Kansas City pitching
Posted by Andy on September 21, 2007
As a general baseball fan, I'd really like to see Kansas City become a competitive team once again. That region is great for baseball, and a lot of great bits of MLB history have happened there.
I'm thoroughly encouraged by Kansas City's pitching staff.
First of all, everybody laughed when KC picked up Gil Meche. Well, he's got an ERA+ of 129, has pitched 202 innings, and has put together one of the most solid seasons for a Royals starting pitcher in a long time. Brian Bannister (who I didn't know until just now is the son of Floyd Bannister) has been equally solid, and together they make a great 1-2 punch.
Now, add that Zack Greinke made his best all-time career start last night, and he might be back on track to becoming another solid starter.
KC's relief pitching has also been good. As of today, here are the splits for relief pitching in the American League. Altogether they've got the 6th best AL ERA and allowed the 3rd-fewest walks with the 2nd-most strikeouts.
My feeling is that solid pitching is a lot more important than hitting, because it's significantly easier to either develop (from within) or attract (as free agents) good hitting, especially with a good young pitching staff. Ultimately they'll need both to be successful, but I think they're pretty close to having the more difficult one nailed.
September 21st, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I love teams that embrace the youth movement, and then sign a couple free agents when they're ready to really compete. The fact that the Royals have a better record than the White Sox makes me really happy.
However, Bannister's ERA this season has been quite lucky. He's more of a back of the rotation guy going forward. Greinke, on the other hand, has a decent shot of becoming the team's ace.
September 21st, 2007 at 2:05 pm
There must be a few Mariner fans who wished they had Meche in the rotation instead of Horacio Ramirez (7.16 ERA, ERA+ 60) or Jeff Weaver (6.21 ERA, ERA+ 69).
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:46 am
Sky--Bannister's got a WHIP of 1.18...doesn't seem like his ERA is lucky to me. Am I missing something?
September 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Andy, maybe Sky meant "flukey", not "lucky". Being a huge Met fan, I've heard a lot of talk about getting rid of Brian Bannister, and while it does hurt to see our staff struggling so much in the 2nd half, I'm not devastated that we let this guy go. His BABIP is in the .250 range, while league average is closer to .300 (Josh Beckett's is at like .315) and you would expect that in the long term this would regress to the mean and his earned runs allowed would increase. Although to his credit, he has seemed to be able to keep it up, at least for this season, despite not striking anyone out and primarily relying on his defense for his success - at the All-Star break, you might have said "Nice flukey first half" and figured his .270 BABIP would regress to the mean, but it's actually gone DOWN throughout the rest of the season.