MiLB_Trevor Cahill and Brett Anderson

[心得]


[出處] 以下文章引用自:

http://www.fantasypros911.com/trevor-cahill-and-brett-anderson-as-good-as-price-and-kershaw.html

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[文章]

First, we start with Cahill. His career minor league GB% is 59% and it was nearly 62% in 2008. So he’s firmly at the top of the heap along with the Lowe’s and Webb’s of the world in terms of inducing grounders. He’s also shown impressive strikeout ability, posting a K/9 of at least 10 at three levels, before a drop-off to 8 upon his promotion to Double-A this year. His MLE in K/9 combining his High-A and Double-A seasons peg him for a 7.4 rate, which means that if he had pitched at the MLB-level this year, he would have recorded a 7.4 K/9, all else equal. So a 62% groundball rate and a 7.4 K/9? You know who that sounds like? None other than Brandon Webb who posted a 64% groundball rate and 7.3 K/9. Wow.

The only chink in the armor so far has been control. Cahill has not posted a BB/9 below 3.2 at any level, and his walk rate jumped to 4.6 at Double-A, not a great sign. However, BB/9 is the easiest of the three skills to improve upon, so this is not such bad news. All in all, Cahill posted an MLE FIP of 3.68 this year, and even in his weaker Double-A showing, still put up a 4.56 FIP, which would be near league average in the AL and respectable for a 20-year old. When you combine such a skill set with a forgiving ballpark and a typically good defense, you have a guy who could post ERAs just as good as more hyped and flashy pitchers such as David Price and Clayton Kershaw.

From a statistical standpoint, Brett Anderson looks even better than Cahill. He’s also a major groundball pitcher, although a little less so than Cahill, clocking in at a 57% rate for his career. He’s also shown excellent strikeout ability, posting nothing less than a 9.2 K/9. However, unlike Cahill who declined at Double-A, Anderson actually improved. He dominated in his 31 innings there by posting an 11 K/9, while only seeing a slight up tick in his walk rate. His full-season MLE K/9 was better than Cahill’s at 7.8, and spiked to 8.7 at Double-A. There is not one pitcher in baseball that combines such groundball inducing ability and strikeout ability like Anderson’s MLEs. Only Felix Hernandez has, but his GB% suspiciously dropped to 52% this year.

he biggest difference between Cahill and Anderson right now is control. Whereas the walks have been a bit of a problem for Cahill, they have not been for Anderson. The 2.6 BB/9 he posted at Double-A was his highest at any level. Putting everything together, his MLE FIP was an impressive 3.80 in 2008. We do have to remember, however, that the MLE FIPs Ii’ve been discussing do not adjust the HR/F ratios. Anderson’s was higher than Cahill’s which explains why his FIP was lower. We clearly don’t have enough evidence to say that Cahill is better at preventing home runs on fly balls.

Upon further glance at Anderson’s stats, it becomes apparent why his name typically hasn’t been thrown around as one of the top pitching prospects in the game, until maybe 2009. He has suffered inflated BABIPs at every stop he’s made. Amazingly, his BABIP has never been lower than .327. This has clearly increased his ERAs and could be blamed for ERAs over 4.00 at High-A in both 2007 and 2008. Those analysts that put together prospect ranking lists focusing on ERA as their statistical support would have undeservedly undervalued him.