Chien-Ming Wang: Real Deal

Firstly, before I begin my post, I must express some personal disappointment.  Now I as much as anyone else understands that when you are assigned to do something, you either do it, or you will pay the penalty.  That’s life and that’s the way things work.  With that said, I do not appreciate it when someone alludes to laziness and apathy when difficulties arise while attempting to do your work.  And I quote:

“I assigned this almost two weeks ago. I warned not to wait too long to get the interviews done, specifically for this reason.”

Whoever said we waited long to get the interviews done?  We waited long for a response from the athletics department in regards to our inquiry about scheduling interviews.  Feel free to contact Michael Kobylanski and ask him when he was first initially contacted by our group.  If any answer is different than Wednesday, January 31, i’d be very surprised.  So I beg for future reference not to rush to judgment.

Speaking of rushing to judgment, that’s what a lot of people had done with Yankees started Chien-Ming Wang.

After going 8-5 as a rookie in 2005 with an ERA of 4.02, most experts had Wang pegged as a one-year wonder, whose heavy sinker and ground-ball prowess would eventually fail under the weak-ranged defense of the New York Yankees infield (The Yankees ranked 11th in the American League in fielding percentage last season).  But as the 2006 season came to a close, nothing could have been further from the truth.

Wang went 19-6 for the Yanks finishing second in the Cy Young Award voting and tying Cy Young winner Johan Santana for the league lead in wins.  Wang also posted a 3.63 ERA and only gave up 12 home runs in 218.0 innings pitched.  But still Wang gets knocked around for not being a true strikeout pitcher.  But things even out, and I’ll prove it.

1. Wang’s lack of strikeouts are made up for by lack of walks and home runs.  One of my favorite statistics is something called DIPS which stands for Defensive Independent Pitching Statistics.  This stat only focuses on the three stats for a pitcher that has absolutely nothing to do with the players behind them: Strikeouts, Walks, and Home Runs.  Now, Wang does not strikeout many batters, he’s a contact pitcher that relies on groundballs.  DIPS usually favors strikeout pitchers, yet because of Wang’s low walk-rate of 2.15 bb/9 IP and even lower home run rate of .5 hr/9 IP were able to allow him to finish 30th in all of baseball in DIPS with 4.04 (average is 5.00) in a stat he should not even be relevant in.  Impressive.

2. Wang has an inhuman grounball ability.  He had the highest Groundball/Flyball ratio in the AL with 4.10 gb/fb.  He was 2nd in the AL with 33 induced double play groundouts and with 1.36 GIDP per 9 IP.  Wang’s ability to keep leadoff men from getting on is also extremely impressive in preventing runs allowing only a .273 OPB (on base percentage) against them.  Even with a crummy defense behind him, Wang continually allows the opportunities for them to make outs.

There is so much more that we can get into.  Component ERA is a way to guage what a pitchers ERA should be, because ERA is known to be fluctuous and not a valuable gauge of a pitchers true ability.  For example, 6 bad games could outshine 12 great ones and leave a good pitchers ERA above the 4.00 mark (which is considered equivalent to a Number 2-3 starter).  Wang’s component ERA was 3.62, meaning Wang’s 3.63 was actually a product of a smidge of bad luck, for he should have been .01 earned runs better. 

Not too bad for a sinkerballer who only has one full season of major league experience, eh?  Just because he doesn’t strikeout 150 batters a season, does not mean he’s any less valuable a pitcher.  And with first baseman/human vacuum Doug Mientkiewicz scooping up at best 1/4 of Arod’s 24 expected errors, Wang may even be ready to break the 3.50 ERA mark, and be the first Yankee to reach 20 wins since Roger Clemens in his Cy Young Award season of 2001.