Not that anyone cares...Small sample sizes - being a wet blanket
So I know that the baseball world has collectively soiled its pants in one fashion or another at the mere existance of Stephen Strasburg on major league mounds. Someone even called him a future hall of famer (you can guess who as an extra credit assignment).
Anyway, I collected from stats from a few pitchers just to put Strasburg's 3 game debut (3 games! Can someone compile a list of all pitchers that had a fantastic 3 game stretch?!). My point is to try and reality check the media, who are totally drunk on Strasburg Kool-Aid, and would cover his post-game showers with they could. I had happy daydreams that the MLB network would be my salvation from the kind of inane overhype and drooling over terribly small sample sizes in terms of coverage, but that's turning out to be one more shattered dream.
1) 23.0 IP / 11 H / 2 R / 2 ER / 1 HR / 42 K / 3 BB .78 ERA / 4.0 H/9 / .39 HR/9 / K:BB 14.0 / K/9 16.4 / BB/9 1.17
2) 19.1 IP / 10 H / 4 R / 4 ER / 2 HR / 32 K / 5 BB 1.86 ERA / 4.66 H/9 / .93 HR/9 / K:BB 6.4 / K/9 15.1 / BB/9 2.33
3a) 20.0 IP / 11 H / 4 R / 4 ER / 2 HR / 29 K / 7 BB 1.80 ERA / 4.95 H/9 / .90 HR/9 / K:BB 4.14 / K/9 13.1 / BB/9 3.15
3b) 31.0 IP / 27 H / 13 R / 12 ER / 2 HR / 41 K / 11 BB 3.48 ERA / 7.94 H/9 / .87 HR/9 / K:BB 3.72 / K/9 13.1 / BB/9 3.15
Now, I cheated a little bit here, but I don't think it hurts my point all that much. One of the stat sets is from 3 consecutive games in their rookie season. 3a and 3b are the best 3 games of a string of 5 consecutive and the entire string of 5 (this player was a rookie in 2009). It's probably pretty easy to pick out which one is Strasburg, but it's the other two that are my way of saying "Let's not give this guy th next 5 Cy Young awards quite yet (man, remember how the talking heads were ready to give the Cy to Halladay on May 1st? Whoops.)
Over these small sample sizes, Pitcher 2 isn't fit to carry Pitcher 1's jock.
Two more, both lines from the same guy. First line is starts 1-3, 2nd line is games 3-5 (Rookie Year, overlap intentional):
4a) 28.0 IP / 19 H / 7 R / 7 ER / 1 HR / 14 K / 7 BB 2.25 ERA / 6.10 H/9 / .32 HR/9 / K:BB 2.0 / K/9 4.5 / BB/9 2.25
4b) 31.0 IP / 27 H / 9 R / 7 ER / 1 HR / 20 K / 5 BB 2.03 ERA / 7.83 H/9 / .29 HR/9 / K:BB 4.0 / K/9 5.80 / BB/9 1.16
Pitchers:
1) Kerry Wood (The 20 K game, and the ones before and after. The 4th-6th starts of his career)
2) Strasburg
3) Max Scherzer (The first, third, and fifth games after being recalled for 3a, and then all 5 for 3b. Using 1, 4, 5 might have made 3a look a little better)
4) Mark Fidrytch. Look at that again. 31 IP over 3 games 4-6, and 28 over 1-3 (game 3 being an 11 IP outing).
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