Source: twinsdaily.com --- Sunday, December 03, 2017
The strikeout has become an accepted and almost celebrated part of Baseball. In 2017, 16 different pitchers recorded at least 200 strikeouts, and 20 starting pitchers found themselves averaging at least one strikeout per inning. Hitters are swinging for the fences more, and as they launch balls into the stratosphere, the strikeout has been (fairly) reduced to just another out. Thus far, the Twins have been behind the curve, but the tide may be turning.In 2017, Minnesota’s best K/9 among starters was recorded by Jose Berrios (8.6). No other starting pitcher posted better than Adalberto Mejia’s 7.8 K/9 and a combined 38 starts from Hector Santiago, Phil Hughes and Bartolo Colon saw just 6.5, 6.4, and 5.3 K/9 marks respectively. In short, the Twins starting staff simply didn’t send batters back to the dugout on their own merits often enough. Unfortunately, 2017 wasn’t a simple outlier. You have to go back to 2012 in order to find the last instance in which a Twins starter recorded a K/9 over 9.0 (Francisco Liriano 9.8). If you want to add a second starter to the requirements, the last time Minnesota had two starting pitchers with 9.0+ K/9 in the same season was 2006 (Liriano 10.7 & Johan Santana 9.4). It’s been a trail of misery both in the rotation and the pen when it comes to strikeout stuff, and all too often the Twins have been synonymous with pitching to contact. We may have finally reached a breakthrough however. Last year, f ...
from Baseball http://ift.tt/2AJtegQ
No comments:
Post a Comment