Chien-Ming Wang

John asked me to write something for the site, not knowing -really- what he was getting into. So here you go, John. I hope to make a habit of these aimless ramblings about baseball.

Forgive stating the obvious, but Chien-Ming Wang is a groundball pitcher and has never made a habit of striking guys out. Most groundballers are the same way. Tim Hudson has never tried to strike out tons and he's done just fine. Likewise Derek Lowe. The dear departed Mark Fidrych's 1976 season was the same way.

(I'm always interested to watch groundball pitchers. The best of them don't look dominant but just wear out that dirt around home plate. And I get frustrated watching my home town team lose to one, since I always feel the hitters are this close to squaring up a few line drives.)

But Wang's commitment to avoiding strikeouts, particularly earlier in his career, is remarkable. In 2008, he struck out 5.1 batters per 9 IP; that's decidedly middle of the pack, and it was his highest rate yet. (All data taken from the incomparable baseball-reference.com.) Given those rates, there was some waiting for Wang to fall back to earth, since almost no pitcher sustains excellence while allowing so many balls in play.

Well, with two lousy starts under his belt this year, Chien-Ming Wang has not been getting the ground balls he used to and the ones he is getting are turning into hits. When they put the ball in play, hitters are hitting .583 against him. .583! Over his career, his batting average on balls in play is .287, and MLB average is .291. There may be some bad luck in there - you know, seeing-eye singles - but he's just plain giving up hard hits. (If you want to know more about batting average on balls in play, check out baseball-reference.com.)

So I don't know what's wrong with him. It seems most likely that he's still injured, but maybe it's just luck that two of his four worst career starts have come in 2009. As I said, I find these guys interesting to watch, so I'll be sure to keep up on how he's doing. And given my rooting interests, I'll be hoping for him to stay in the rotation for the whole year, but not quite be right.

OK, one other thing about Wang. In 2006, he placed second the Cy Young voting, despite just 76 strikeouts in 218 IP. I realize Cy Young voting has a lot more to do with W-L than anything else, but that kind of success with just 76 Ks is almost without precedent.

I say "almost" because as soon as the thought entered my head I had to find the precedent. The last guy with so few Ks and Cy Young votes in either league was Jeff Ballard, who tied for sixth in the AL voting in 1989, when he struck out 62 batters in 215.1 innings, and went 18-8 for a good Baltimore team. Maybe that's interesting and maybe it's not, but what I found fascinating was how many soft-tossers I had to go through to find one who matched Wang's disdain for the K. Along the way to uncover Ballard, I passed through such flamethrowers as Kenny Rogers, Jamie Moyer, Jimmy Key, Tim Wakefield, Charles Nagy, Bob Tewksbury, and Bob Gullickson. All of those guys, and nearly all relievers who show up in the voting, struck out more batters than Wang. Jamie Moyer, for goodness' sake!