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1.11.2004 |
WOOD'S WORTH: part one
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
May 1998 saw me in Thailand, where I was eating, drinking, and carousing my way through a year-long stint as a teacher in the northern city of Chiang Mai. News from the U.S. was available but scant, and baseball news almost nonexistent. So it wasn't for several weeks that I heard that the Cubs' young whipper-snapper Kerry Wood had thrown a 20-strikeout gem against the Astros. The news, when it reached me, had me beaming across the Pacific.
Wood's game stands as one of the most, if not the most, dominant pitching performances in baseball history, and yet Wood also suffers from this outing, a victim to the shadow cast by his great rookie outing. There are whispers of unfulfilled potential, a desire for Wood's career to mimic that May afternoon -- for every outing to be the Greatest Performance. In Cubbie-ville, Wood has somehow, to this point, fallen short.
This is nonsense. As he now stands, Wood is clearly one of the elite 20 or so pitchers in the game today. And he is, in fact, already a historically significant figure in MLB history:
STRIKEOUT/9 IP vs LEAGUE AVERAGE, 900 IP MINIMUM
-name- -diff- -player- -league-
1 Randy Johnson 4.91 11.16 6.25
2 Nolan Ryan 4.22 9.55 5.32
3 Kerry Wood 4.07 10.62 6.55
4 Pedro Martinez 4.03 10.50 6.47
5 Sandy Koufax 3.76 9.27 5.51
6 Rube Waddell 3.54 7.04 3.50
7 J.R. Richard 3.43 8.37 4.94
8 Dazzy Vance 3.25 6.20 2.96
9 Lee Smith 3.13 8.73 5.61
10 Sam McDowell 3.12 8.86 5.74
HITS/9 IP vs LEAGUE AVERAGE, 900 IP MINIMUM
-name- -diff- -player- -league-
1 Pedro Martinez 2.53 6.72 9.25
2 Kerry Wood 2.41 6.75 9.16
3 Nolan Ryan 2.20 6.56 8.76
4 Randy Johnson 2.08 7.02 9.10
5 Sid Fernandez 2.03 6.85 8.89
6 J.R. Richard 2.00 6.88 8.87
7 Amos Rusie 1.86 8.08 9.94
8 Sandy Koufax 1.81 6.79 8.60
9 Cy Seymour 1.75 8.32 10.07
10 Mike Jackson 1.69 7.32 9.01
One of the hardest pitchers to hit in the history of the game, Wood is coming off his best year yet, and he's only now beginning his prime. But how much is his prime worth? This is a question the Cubs' management is currently trying to answer, as they look to extend Wood's stay in Chicago for at least a few more years.
Being historically significant is one thing, but being historically great is another. And Wood's not there yet. For all his dominance and unhittableness, Wood still has his flaws. Like Nolan Ryan before him, Wood's control is poor. Much of the good done by being hard to hit is undone when you walk 100 batters and lead the world in batters hit (21). Wood's wildness has yet to significantly improve in a season, and in fact regressed last year after Wood posted the lowest walk rate of his career in 2002. An improvement in this area would have a dramatic effect on Wood's pitching, transforming him from a top-20 pitcher into Bob Gibson incarnate.
What can be expected from Wood in the future? It's hard to know, indeed perhaps harder to know than usual for a pitcher. Wood's similarity indices on both Baseball Prospectus and Baseball-Reference.com aren't particularly high, as Wood's extreme k-, hit-, and walk-rates make him a fairly unique pitcher. In my next Wood article, I'll take a look at Wood as compared to a couple old-timers, to see if we can glean any trends for Wood's future. This might make it easier to look at Wood's worth in light of current contracts and offers being afforded Bartolo Colon, Javier Vazquez, Kevin Millwood, and Andy Pettitte.
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 posted by alex at 01:57 PM | comments (1) |
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