Behind the subscription wall, our partners at ESPN Insider have launched a new blog called TMI (The Max Info). Baseball Prospectus is contributing to it, as are writers from Fangraphs, Tom Tango from the Inside the Book blog, and folks from within ESPN’s Stats and Info department, a couple of whom I had the pleasure of meeting when I went to Bristol for a big baseball summit a few weeks back. It’s an all-out slide rule war. Well, not really, since I don’t think you’re going to see the future of sabermetrics settled over 250-500 word posts delivered by otherwise competing entities.
Today I made my debut with a short bit on the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw. Back in June, the 21-year-old southpaw introduced a slider into his arsenal. His numbers from that point onward are eye-popping, and can stand with both league’s elite hurlers, albeit with the caveat that his age limited his workload:
Player GS IP ERA K/9 BB/9 HR/9
Clayton Kershaw 20 115.0 2.03 10.2 4.6 0.2
Felix Hernandez 23 167.1 2.10 7.8 2.7 0.5
Tim Lincecum 22 160.0 2.25 10.0 2.8 0.5
Adam Wainwright 23 161.0 2.29 8.6 2.1 0.6
Jon Lester 21 138.0 2.35 9.9 2.6 0.6
Chris Carpenter 23 163.2 2.53 6.4 1.8 0.4
Javier Vazquez 21 149.0 2.54 9.2 1.7 0.9
Jair Jurrjens 23 149.0 2.60 6.8 3.1 0.7
Zack Greinke 22 147.1 2.75 9.4 2.4 0.7
Roy Halladay 21 157.0 2.87 8.0 1.4 0.9
Seven of the players on that list received Cy Young votes. Kershaw did not, but if he keeps pitching like that, he will soon.