2009年3月1日 星期日

[MLB]Sean Marshall & Horacio Ramirez

[心得]


[出處] 以下文章引用自:
http://waiverwire.blogspot.com/2009/02/sean-marshall-2009.html
http://waiverwire.blogspot.com/2009/03/horacio-ramirez-2009.html

------------------------------------------------
[文章]

Sean Marshall 2009

Sean Marshall has a good chance of winning the last spot in the Chicago Cubs rotation for 2009. He also has a good chance of being one of the better #5 starters in the major leagues this year, and a nice late round bargain in relatively deep fantasy leagues. Marshall's strikeout rate improved drastically last year, going from a K/9 of 5.8 the previous year to 8.1. That was in 65.1 innings, which is enough that a change of that magnitude has to be somewhat meaningful. His control remained about the same. His groundball rate got substantially worse, dropping from 48.2% to 41.2% His increased strikeout rate may have occurred as the result of a change in approach that was achieved at the expense of his groundball rate, or it may have simply been improvement in a young pitcher, with the lower groundball rate being a fluke. If it was the latter, then Marshall has the chance to be an excellent starting pitcher this year. If not, he's still worth owning in deep leagues.

Horacio Ramirez 2009

According to sources, Horacio Ramirez will be given the Royals #4 starter role, leaving Luke Hochevar and Brian Bannister to fight it out for the last spot in their rotation for 2009. Not that the others are much better, but I really wonder what Ramirez has ever done to deserve this free pass. In 656.2 major league innings, he's struck out 301 and walked 251. That's terrible. He does tend to keep the ball on the ground, with a very good (but not spectacular) groundball rate that usually is in the vicinity of 50%. However, even that comes with a question mark, as Ramirez has tended to allow more home runs than would be expected given his groundball rate. Ramirez is 29 years old, so that's another reason for the Royals not to give him a spot in the rotation - either of the players he'll be taking the spot from are younger, and presumably more likely to show some improvement. The silver lining in all of this is that we can take advantage of the Royals poor decision making, and look to target Ramirez' opponents in daily leagues such as Draftbug.