Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Ratios, damn it. Ratios.

This is a post about Ricky Romero.

Sort of.

It seems pretty simple, so tell me if I'm getting this wrong. As a pitcher, if you're going to walk a lot of guys, you're going to have to strike out a hell of a lot more of them. "They" say a good ratio of strikeouts to walks is 2:1, "they" being the local team's television commentary duo that shall remain nameless. Fangraph's 'average' K/9 and BB/9 rates are 7.1 and 3.3 respectively, therefore, one can imagine that an 'average' K/BB is 2.15 and an 'above average' or good ratio would look more like 2.68. Here's a table, dangit.

Rating
K/9
BB/9
K/BB
Excellent
10.0
1.5
6.67
Great
8.5
2.3
3.70
Above Average
7.5
2.8
2.68
Average
7.1
3.3
2.15
Below Average
6.0
4.0
1.50
Poor
5.0
4.5
1.11
Awful
4.5
5.0
0.90


Looking solely at this stat, Ricky Romero is hovering between 'below average' and 'poor', with a K/BB of 1.29. As of this writing, the only qualified pitchers worse so far this season are the new-New York Yankee, Derek Lowe with a K/BB of 1.00, and Carlos Zambrano at 1.28. Ricky's 2012 troubles have been expertly summed up at both Getting Blanked and Fangraphs, so I'm not going to try and reinvent the wheel here, nor am I going to point to this and say "Bingo-bango, sugar in the gas tank" as if this is the only reason for his slumping season. There are probably all sorts of issues be they mechanical or mental contributing to this years' struggles.

What is curious to me, and what drove me to look into this stat, is the significant drop-off in his K/BB rate. In 2009, his rookie season, he posted a so-so 1.78. He followed that up with a closer to league average 2.12 in 2010, and 2.23 in 2011 (league averages were 2.17 and 2.3 respectively). The loss of almost an entire strikeout per walk from one season to the next is shocking to me as this appears to be a number that stays relatively level for a pitcher over their career.

He is three walks away from matching last season's total. With a BB/9 of 4.82, he stands a good chance of taking care of that tonight against the Chicago White Sox. (Thankfully, for Romero's sake, the White Sox are one of the least patient teams at the plate, ranking 26th in the league with a 7.3 BB%)

One could take solace in the thought that this drastic rise in walks and decline in strikeouts is merely an anomaly on an otherwise positive, upward career trajectory. On the other hand, he pitches in Toronto, where the panic button is constantly in the shop for repairs from overuse. With about 9 starts left this season, it will be interesting to see where his strikeout to walk ratio ends up, and what it looks like going forward. I'll be watching, that's for sure.

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