Grizzlies starting pitcher Mike Kickham, after a strong last five starts, could be getting a big-league call-up soon in the wake of the injury to Giants starter Ryan Vogelsong.
Kickham is in the middle of a turn-around at just the right time it seems. The Vogelsong injury creates am opening in the starting rotation and Kickham may be able to fill it. His K/BB ratio is about 2.5 ( 54K's and 22 BB's) which is not too shabby. Anything over 2.0 is a pretty good marker for success.
from the Fresno Bee:
Fresno Grizzlies' Mike Kickham continues strong audition for Giants call-up - Fresno Grizzlies - fresnobee.com:
But Kickham has come on strong and has won three straight for the first time in his career after Thursday's performance.
In his past five starts, Kickham owns a 1.72 ERA and is holding batters to a .214 average. He also has struck out 29 and allowed just nine walks in that stretch.
In fact, Kickham's strikeout-to-walk ratio has been solid all year: 54-22 in 54 innings for the season.
'via Blog this'
In fact, Baseball Digest recently published a list of pitchers with the best K/BB ratios with a minimum of 2,000 K's. Granted this is going to give you a list of solid starters by definition. You have to be good to hang around long enough to log 2,000 K's in a career.
Pitcher Ratio
Curt Schilling 4.38
Pedro Martinez 4.15
Roy Halliday 3.78
Mike Mussina 3.58
Greg Maddux 3.37
Javier Vasquez 3.32
Randy Johnson 3.26
Dennis Eckersley 3.25
Juan Marichal 3.25
Fergie Jenkins 3.20
That would be a pretty solid staff. That's why I like that ratio > 3.0 as a prospect identifier for the minor leaguers. San Jose starter Clayton Blackburn has pretty solid numbers here and Fresno RHP Chris Heston does as well. It's just a basic, quick and dirty metric that shows a pitchers efficiency in controlling / dominating AB's whether it be via power pitching (high K's) or control / finesse pitching (low BB's).
As the list above shows, a nice mix of power arms and crafty pitchers.
No comments:
Post a Comment