Amongst the rankings I have seen so far, there hasn't been a most improved list yet. By this, I am talking about the players who statistically will improve the most upon last year's totals. I feel the leaders amongst National League pitchers are going to be Matt Cain of the Giants and Cole Hamels of the Phillies. Cain is 22 years old, Hamels is 23. Last year, Cain spent the entire season as the number four starter for the Giants, which is where he will be again to start this season. Hamels spent last year splitting time between AAA and the bigs. It seems that Hamels may be a year behind Cain in overall progress despite being a year older. Is Cain going to be the better pitcher? We will have to wait and see, but February is a good month for speculation I suppose. Here are Cain's numbers in 2005, when he split time between the minors and the majors, pitted against Hamels' numbers last year.
Cain (2005): 12-6, 3.35 ERA, 9.5 k/9, 3.5 bb/9, 191 IP.
Hamels (2006): 11-8, 3.59 ERA, 10.2 k/9, 2.8 bb/9, 155 IP.
Just to clarify, that's a 3.6 CMD ratio for Hamels to Cain's 2.7 in 2005. Thing is, Cain's walk rate actually rose to 4.1 last year, his first full season in the majors. But I'm confident that at 22 years old, Cain has time to work out his control issues. Things could be a lot worse for sure. Hamels actually posted a behemoth 6.2 bb/9 in AA ball in 2005, which I have to assume was discrepency based on the small sample size (19 IP). Still, that's pretty strange. For now I'm going to leave this debate open.
Other rising stars: Scott Olsen (Marlins), Chuck James (Braves)
3 comments:
Your blog is a good source for baseball fans and those who want to know more about baseball. The focus is very clear. A baseball fan would probably want to compare your opinion of Cain and Hamels to his or her own opinion, and this would be enjoyable reading for baseball lovers.
Thanks for the update Ben. Cain might be in the #4 spot, but I think he'll be the Giants best pitcher this year, if not among the best in the league. I like watching him pitch; I'd put him a notch above Hamels, although he too is a stud.
Your web page is neat and clean. I like pages with black backgrounds, and I'm not just saying that because I'm black. I would have gone with bigger pics (of Cain and Hamels), though.
Wow, that was a lot of information. I'm very unfamiliar with baseball, especially teams who are not local. I have only actually gone to one professional baseball game and that was an A's game a long time ago. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed the environment. What do you think about the A's? Anyway, your blog has reminded me that I definitely need to go to a Giant's game sometime before I graduate this Spring.
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