As Bill himself would say:

Pass.

Actually, the subsequent two paragraphs of Abraham's entry are also important, and should have been included in the preview:

"Wang has made only 80 starts in his career, most with two pitches. I’ve stood there and watched him work on other pitches in the bullpen. I’ve talked to him at length about it. He knows people sit on his sinker. Did you know that his slider was his best pitch in college but the Yankees had him dump it when he had shoulder issues? Now he’s healthy and he’s working on it again. He also is doing a lot of work on a changeup.

This guy shows up every five days, he pitches deep into games and he has handled almost every big-game assignment with aplomb. Why people insist on running him down remains a mystery to me."

But when the statheads like my anonymous friend leave no room for humanity is where they lose me.

Will someone please think of the humanity!?!?!?

It is working in the short term, but as Bill James as pointed out in the past, no pitcher with a K/9 below the league average has gone on to have a meaningful career.

I doubt Bill James would have actually pointed this out, because he must have been aware of Tommy John, he of the career 4.3 K/9. Unless 288 wins isn't "meaningful."

It was actually half the league average.

James was most certainly aware of Tommy John, and mentioned him in the article I read in the NBJHA. 4.3/9 had much more mileage in John's day than it does today (4.5/9 for Wang in '07).

That said, Wang has a very reasonable chance to develop a strikeout pitch and drive both his value and expected career length significantly upwards.

there will always be the risk that the groundballs get through and he’ll have bad starts. He can’t be counted on in the playoffs.

I'll admit that my senility is advancing by the day, but I seem to recall a bunch of walks, homers and loud line drives in those two bad playoff starts. I think he'd have gotten bombed even if the ground balls didn't get through.

Unless 288 wins isn't "meaningful."

That's what the BBWAA said, and that's good enough for me!

"Will someone please think of the humanity!?!?!?"

Oh, the...

I doubt Bill James would have actually pointed this out, because he must have been aware of Tommy John, he of the career 4.3 K/9. Unless 288 wins isn't "meaningful."

Actually James discussed John at great length, to paraphrase, whenever he told people that you need a high K rate (or at least start out with one), people would always argue with him and invariably say:
"What about all those pitchers Tommy John"? and he'd answer:

1: What pitchers? There is only one Tommy John.
2: Tommy John is not really Tommy John, most of his career he was right at and sometimes over league average k/9.

His claim was that John was the dividing line, you could be successful fro a long time by suppressing HRs and walks, so long as you could keep your K-rate at about the Tommy John level (relative to league)- any lower and you were doomed.

kev, that's no coincidence. The procedure was named after him because he was the first guy to receive it.

Unless he develops a legit strikeout pitch there will always be the risk that the groundballs get through and he’ll have bad starts.

I missed the study that shows high K pitchers never have bad starts.

Did you know that his slider was his best pitch in college but the Yankees had him dump it when he had shoulder issues?

When his slider is on, like it was against the Mets last year, he's capable of striking out 8 or 9 batters a game. If he's able to throw it consistently, or even more then he did last year, then he's going to take the next step up.

What really hurts Wang isn't so much that he's a groundball pitcher but rather he has a cheese grater for a shortstop playing behind him.

Yeah, that's killed him so far in his career. Great point.

we've gone over Wang and the strikeout issue ad nauseum, but it has to be said every time: Wang doesn't get many Ks, but he absolutely keeps the ball in the ballpark. As long as he keeps doing that, he can probably still be a quality pitcher.

Wang is the only Taiwanese pitcher in MLB, correct? Could his low strikeout totals be seen in a cultural context, in the sense that strikeouts were not made a "priority" for him in the way they are for American pitchers?

There's something to be said for the notion that, if you can consistently get outs by making batters hit ground balls to your fielders, an out can be accomplished in 1 to 2 pitches instead of the 4 or 5 it'll typically take to get a strikeout (factoring in balls and foul balls). Fewer pitchers = greater efficiency and the ability to pitch deeper into ballgames. The American fetishization of the strikeout would make it very hard for someone growing up here to buy into that notion - perhaps it's actually part of Wang's gameplan.

Of course, I remember an episode of The Baseball Bunch over 20 years ago when Dan Quisenberry was the guest star. He talked about a pitch he called the "at 'em ball" - which basically meant that when he threw it, he wanted to the batter to hit it "at 'em" (his fielders). Quiz had a very low K/9 rate as well - 3.27 for his career - but was obviously a very successful reliever.

Is Chien Ming Wang simply a descendent of Dan Quisenberry, minus the submarine style and the walrus mustache?

Wang is the only Taiwanese pitcher in MLB, correct?

Mr. Kuo
10.2 K/9

General Tsao
6.1 K/9

The hitters catch up to every pitcher eventually. As long as they haven't caught up yet, the best plan is to keep running the pitcher out there and not to worry about his leading indicators.

The issue is predictions. Wang's 2006-2007 performance is what it is and his K rate doesn't discount it. I wouldn't use K rate too heavily in Cy Young votes. But I'd sure use it in signing pitchers to long-term contracts.

As a rule, pitchers strike out fewer and fewer batters as they age. There's some variation of course, but K rates often are the highest in their first or second full seasons and then start to fall. If two pitchers each lose, say, 0.3 K per 9 innings per year, the pitcher who starts at 4.5 is going to enter some unknown territory within 3-5 years, while a pitcher who starts at 7.5 has a lot more margin for error. How many pitchers can survive at 6.0? Lots. How many starters can survive at 3.0? None. So a high-K pitcher likely has more years of future success than a low-K pitcher with similar results.

Maybe Wang won't decline. Maybe he's a unique type. You'd have to say it's possible. But is it likely? There have been a lot of low-K pitchers in MLB over the years, and almost all of them had shorter careers than you'd expect. Wang being the exception isn't impossible but is unlikely.

The other issue is whether the K rate should be taken as absolute or relative. Relative to the league, Wang's K rate is far lower than John's. He had a league average K rate most of his career. Is that distinction meaningful? Or is the hard number the key factor?

James said that it seems to be different for relievers.

Two thoughts on Wang, who I've watched intently:

Statistical evaluations like James's about strikeout pitchers are interesting as descriptive, not so much as predictive. Wang is not Tommy John, nor is he Fidrych. He's a sinkerball pitcher who throws extremely hard and has outstanding control. You couldn't find a half-dozen guys like him in the last hundred years (and of course, I know as soon as I say that, someone is going to pop up a list of fourteen guys in this category).

Right now, Wang's liability is his fastball, not guys sitting on the sinker. There's a hell of a big difference between a good 92-mph sinker and a meat 95-mph fastball, but the line is thin. The problem seems to be when he pitches from the stretch. It's then when the sinker doesn't drop. Cleveland saw a whole lot of those sinkers-that-don't-sink this October. So yeah, I think long-term, he's got to add at least the slider to open up the fastball.

Wang is the only Taiwanese pitcher in MLB, correct?

Well, he's the only one I enjoy seeing fail.

If you became a fan of an NL West team you could hope for two Taiwanese pitchers to fail at once in every game against the Dodgers.

If you became a fan of an NL West team you could hope for two Taiwanese pitchers to fail at once in every game against the Dodgers.

Btw, when i said Hu was going to be the next Tejada, I didn't mean that he was goign to get named in about 3 hours.

I'm the one who sent the "anonymous" e-mail (it was from my Gmail account, so not sure why it was anonymous) to Abraham, and he conveniently edited out the main reason for my e-mail. In his previous post, he argued that Wang compared favorably to Beckett because their ERA and W-L were similar last year. The first sentence in my e-mail, which he removed, was that he would be better off using K/9, BB/9, HR/9, etc. when comparing two pitchers. The rest was just to show why I didn't think they were comparable.

Baseball Bunch clip with the Famous Chicken on youtube

and he conveniently edited out the main reason for my e-mail.

Which is why, as a tribute...I sipped off "subsequent two paragraphs of Abraham's entry are also important, and should have been included in the preview"

HA!

kev, that's no coincidence. The procedure was named after him because he was the first guy to receive it.

Actually I think John was merely the first guy that the surgery was successful on. I'm pretty sure that Steve Hargan had the procedure done on him before John and I'd bet there were others.