The Case of Jon Niese

On Monday I profiled Barry Zito, you can find that write up at The Case of Barry Zito, after seeing him twirl a gem on Friday night against the Mets. There wasn’t just one lefty who was dealing it on that night as Jonathan Niese of the Mets allowed a mere run in seven innings of work. He wasn’t quite as good as Zito who tossed eight shutout innings, but Niese was good enough that I thought it would be wise to revisit my take on his value heading into the second half because to this set of eyeballs he looked very, very good on that night.

Niese, who actually possesses a repertoire that is fairly close to the one that is featured by Zito (with the addition of about three to four mph on his fastball), has been extremely effective of late. If you remove his horrible outing on June 22nd when he allowed six runs in just 4.2 innings against the Tigers, Niese has thrown up 7-straight “quality starts.” In that time he has allowed two or fewer earned runs five times, and over his last four starts, despite a 2-2 record, he has a 1.63 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 8.13 K/9 and a 3.57 K/BB ratio. Yeah, he hasn’t just been good, he has been Kim Kardashian in a bikini hot. Speaking of Kim, I’m not going to sit here and say that she isn’t a looker, but would I be insane to suggest that her sister Kourtney is actually hotter? Back to baseball.

If I’m going to suggest paying close attention to Zito in the second half as I did in the previous piece, I’d be stupid not to offer the same advice with Niese, especially when you compare the performance of each to the other.

Niese: 3.44 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, 7.17 K/9, 2.48 K/BB, 1.55 GB/FB
Zito: 3.51 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 6.66 K/9, 1.90 K/BB, 0.82 GB/FB

Neither lefty is a strikeout machine, but I much prefer the 7+ mark of Niese to the mark in the 6′s level of Zito. I also like the profile of Niese more given that his GB/FB ratio is greatly enhanced compared to the fly ball tendencies of Mr. Zito.

Is it possible that I haven’t been willing to give Niese his due? Based upon what my eyes saw last week, and the review of the numbers I just quickly went through, it’s fairly evident that my New York bias has precluded me from noticing that the young lefty from the Mets is pitching at a pretty high level right now and that he shouldn’t be on waivers in mixed leagues.

Fun with Numbers

Last week in Numbers: A Look Back, I took a look at some of the outstanding numbers posted by Hall of Fame ballplayers. I wanted to close the piece today with another couple of noteworthy accomplishments from the annals of the game.

* In 1890 Amos Rousie walked an all-time record 289 batters in a season in his second year as a professional. You can forgive that walk total given that he worked 548.2 innings that season. Oh yeah, he also completed 56 of his 62 starts for the New York Giants. Last season the entire National League completed 77 games.

* Speaking of innings pitched, how does that mark of 548.2 rank in the history of the game? Try just 37th. In fact, there have been 13 seasons in big league history in which a hurler tossed more than 600 innings with the record being 680 by Will White in 1879. That year White completed every single one of his 75 starts on his way to 43 victories for the Cincinnati Reds. One other note. He was pretty stingy with a 1.99 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP.

* No pitcher in the history of the game was harder to hit than Nolan Ryan. Over the course of his career he allowed 6.56 hits per nine innings. For context, Mariano Rivera has posted a mark of 6.92 in his career.

By Ray Flowers

Numbers: A Look Back

Each week I write a piece entitled By The Numbers where I break down all forms of interesting information from the baseball diamond. In this entry I’m gonna take that same idea but go back in time with my time machine as I’ll list a bunch of interesting numbers and facts that pertain to players that have been immortalized in the HOF.

Luis Aparacio led the AL in steals in each of his first nine seasons in the league (his high was 56). From 1960-64 he stole 51, 53, 31, 40 and 57 bases each season. While none of those totals are outlandish, it should be pointed out that the game was played differently back then with base runners rarely attempting a steal. In fact, during that five year only one other rival was able to steal as many as 30 bases in a season.

Yogi Berra is one of the greatest hitting catchers of all-time (11 times he went deep 20 times and nine times he produced at least 90 RBI). He also won the MVP award on three separate occasions. But perhaps the most amazing number of all in his career is the fact that he struck out 12 times, twelve, in 1950 over the span of 597 at-bats. He was no slap hitter that year either producing a batting line of .322 with 28 homers and 124 RBI for the Yankees.

Sandy Koufax led the NL in ERA each of the last five seasons of his career (he had to retire with elbow problems at the age of merely 30). Three times he posted a mark below 1.90, and his five year run resulted in an overall ERA of 1.95 in that time. He also went 111-34 during that five year year of excellence for the Dodgers (.766 winning percentage).

Juan Marichal led baseball with 191 victories during the 1960′s. Three times in that decade he won at least 25 games, but he was never able to win the Cy Young award

Bill Mazeroski made the Hall of Fame despite the fact that he never hit even .285 in a season. Moreover his career mark was .260, he had a pathetic .299 OBP, and his career OPS was a frightening .267. He did however make six All-Star teams while also winning eight Gold Gloves as one of the finest fielding second basemen of all-time. It’s ironic that he is most remembered for hitting the first walk-off homer in World Series history in Game 7 when the Pirates defeated the Yankees in 1960 on his blast.

Amos Rousie is a HOF pitchers who won 246 games in his career with a 3.07 ERA from 1889-1901 (he won 30-games 4-straight seasons). Still, he was far from a control artist as he led the league in walks five straight seasons with a high of 289 batters in 1890, the most ever in a single season. At the same time you’ll want to cut the guy a little bit of slack since he tossed 548.2 innings in that season. In fact, in the five seasons that he led the league in walks, each season with at least 200 free passes, he never threw less than 444 innings. During that fateful season of 1890 his BB/9 rate was 4.74 which is actually a hair lower than the 4.78 mark that Scott Kazmir currently has to lead the “worst” list of 2010.

Hoyt Wilhelm was the first pitcher in big league history to win the ERA title despite the fact that he spent the entire season in the bullpen. In 1952, his rookie season mind you, Hoyt led the league with a 2.43 ERA and 71 games pitched. Since the NL played 154 games that year, his total of 159.1 innings was enough for him to qualify for the ERA title. He won 15 games and saved 11 on his way to another league leading figure, a .833 winning percentage.

Ted Williams won the Triple Crown in 1942 (.356-36-137) and 1947 (.343-32-114). He didn’t win the MVP in either season as he finished second in ’42 and ’47. Amazingly, Williams also led the league in OBP each season (.499 and .497) as well as SLG (.648 and .634) yet he still wasn’t awarded the trophy. Moreover, and this is truly amazing, from 1941-42, and 1946-49 (he missed 1943-45 serving in World War II), Williams led the AL in OBP and SLG in each and every season. All told, he led the AL in both slash categories an amazing nine times. As great as Albert Pujols is he has done that only one time (in 2009).

By Ray Flowers