Yahoo!: Passan: Royals’ Bannister unafraid to do the math

Voros, Mike Fast, Bannister, Rick Peterson, Bill James...pick your poisson, it’s one big party!

Bannister would like to sit down with Bill James, who lives about 30 miles down the road in Lawrence, Kan., or with McCracken, and ask them whether curveball pitchers tend to have lower BABIPs. He looks at the league leaders every year – Orlando Hernandez and Chris Young and A.J. Burnett and Barry Zito last year, Young and Josh Beckett and Pedro Martinez and Matt Cain the year before – and sees a wicked hook as the common thread.

“Numbers aren’t necessary for everybody,” Bannister said. “There’s pitchers in this league, and everyone knows who they are, who have such elite stuff that if they got in their own head too much, it might hurt their performance. A huge majority of guys, though, are a (No.) 2, 3, 4, 5 starter and need every advantage they can. You’re in the major leagues because you have major-league quality pitches, but you’re looking for that edge any way you can.”

Bannister got his first taste of sabermetric thinking from Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson, one of baseball’s most forward thinkers. Bannister remembers sitting in a room with Martinez and Tom Glavine, two of this generation’s greatest, and hearing Peterson break down batting averages in counts and situations.