Comcast: Salfino: Phils Pitching by the Numbers

Live from the Bowl-O-Rama-Slamma-Lamma-Ding-Dong Lanes...the latest from Salfino!

Cole Hamels

ZiPS says, 14 wins, 192 innings, 185 K’s and 50 walks. He’s great. 4:1 K:BB ratio. Only 2:1 this year, but it’s early. At age 24, he should get better. The homer rate has been high, but there are park factors at play. Hamels threw more changeups (34 percent of all pitches) than any starter in the league last year other than Tom Glavine. A number of scouts I’ve spoken to this year consider the changeup to be the most effective complementary pitch, all things being equal. Hamels is clearly one of the top 10 pitches in the sport and reasonably can be grouped in the top half dozen.

Kyle Kendrick

ZiPS only gives him 60-something innings. So we’re going to have to fly solo here, too. I hate to keep beating the same horse here, but when you strike out less than 4.0 per nine innings like Kendrick in ‘07, you are swimming upstream against a swift current. He’ll survive that only if he continues to flash the great control he showed in 2007: (just 2.0 walks per 9 innings). But this year, he’s walked eight guys and K’ed one. Hitters are also crushing liners off him (well above average rates of 21.1 percent in ‘07 and 27.3 percent this year). Oh, and his K-rates were terrible in the minors, too.