Sunday, June 03, 2012

Stephen Strasburg is pretty good

Yes, that heading is a bit of Twitter humor. Stephen Strasburg is pretty good like Lennon-McCartney were pretty good at writing songs. His latest Top Forty hit was a nine-strikeout, zero-walk dominance of the Atlanta Braves in a game where thirteen of his ninety pitches topped 98 MPH including two over 99 in his seventh inning of work. His change-up averaged 91 MPH. His change-up! His curve averaged 83 MPH, or a typical fastball night for Bruce Chen. The only knock on him all game was that he went without a hit in two at bats to lower his average to .350. The bum.

Looking at his Brooks Baseball charts for the game is just an amazing site to see. As you can see below, he has the repeatable mechanics of a Mariano Rivera but can do it for seven innings. He could probably do it for nine innings, but you know, we have to protect these young kids.


So let's recap Strasburg's season to this point. He has made eleven starts and is 6-1 on the season. He has struck out 10.94 batters per nine innings while only walking 2.35. The strikeouts will continue and that walk rate will come down as the season continues. He has a FIP of 2.32 and a SIERA of 2.44. His WHIP is high for him at 1.05. That's low for most people, but high for him. Batters are batting .215 against him for the season. 

And if that doesn't float your boat, he also has a 1.031 OPS as a batter with a wOBA of .438. Well, hello there. Yeah, the kid is pretty good just like the government is pretty good at spending money. And just to be sure that you can have visual evidence of how wicked his stuff is, this post will leave you with his nine strikeouts courtesy of MLB.com. All this observer can say is...Wow!



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