THT: Clone Wars: Jonathan Sanchez and Clayton Kershaw

This doesn’t follow my normal comparison as I usually have two players with similar stat lines and try to explain why one player might be better or more surprising. This time I found two players who couldn’t have looked more different in 2009, but looking at the numbers they should have been more similar. These two pitchers are two of the better strikeout pitchers, but they also can’t keep from giving up the free passes.

Name           W   L   ERA   WHIP   K   BB   IP   K/9   BB/9 K/BB GB%    FB%    HR/FB%
Jonathan Sanchez   8   12 4.24 1.37   177   88   163.1 9.75 4.85 2.01 40.70%  43.10%  10.30%
Clayton Kershaw     8   8   2.79 1.23   185   91   171   9.74 4.79 2.03 39.40%  41.60%  4.10%

This matchup in 2009 came down to one thing. Kershaw gained a huge advantage in his number of homers allowed. You could argue he is going to continue this since he’s pitching in Dodger Stadium for half his future games, but as we know AT&T Park is not friendly to hitters either. Kershaw had the lowest HR/FB% in baseball this year and less than half the amount of any other pitcher on the Dodgers staff. On the other hand Sanchez threw a fairly high HR/FB% based on other Giants pitchers such as Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum. Using xFIP we can get an idea of how similar they are with Kershaw at 3.94 and Sanchez at 4.22.

Really? Baseball-Reference has the park factors for AT&T park at multi-year: Batting - 104, Pitching - 104;  one-year: Batting - 105, Pitching - 104.

Dodgers Stadium is at multi-year: Batting - 95, Pitching - 94;  one-year: Batting - 95, Pitching - 93