| REGISTER TO WIN | |
 |
SURPRISE, Ariz. | There is a certain irony to it. The Royals pitcher most likely to understand the reams of quantitative analysis so dear to baseball’s burgeoning sabermetric community is the pitcher whose future draws so little love from its conclusions.
“I’ve spoken with a lot of those guys,” right-hander Brian Bannister admits with an easy smile. “I’m well aware the popular opinion is that I’m going to regress. You can throw whatever (negative) adjective you want in there.
“I’m working with the same set of data. So it doesn’t bother me.”
Without getting too technical — although Bannister is willing and able to do that — the general conclusion from the statistical models is he strikes out too few hitters and yields too many hits as a fly-ball pitcher to duplicate, let alone improve on, his rookie success.
The analysis breaks down, Bannister says, because his basic philosophy is different from most pitchers who compile similar statistics.
“If I didn’t try to pitch to contact,” he said, “I would say yes, I’d fall into that typical category: Low strikeout, high fly-ball pitcher — not being successful in the future.
“The difference is I do pitch to contact. I’m getting them to put the ball in play quickly. I might give up more hits but I have fewer walks. I’m counteracting everything that they’re saying about me.”
The Royals hope he’s right, of course. They view Bannister as a cornerstone of their rotation for years to come after a rookie season in which he went 12-9 with a 3.87 ERA in 27 starts.
“For someone to say he was lucky is absurd,” pitching coach Bob McClure said. “I don’t think it’s luck. Look at last year and tell me how many starters gave up fewer hits than innings pitched?”
Cue up those numbers: Bannister was one of 18 AL pitchers to allow fewer hits than innings pitched. His average of 8.51 hits per nine innings ranked 13th in the league — right behind Boston’s Josh Beckett.
“I think he’ll get better and better for a couple of reasons,” McClure said. “One is his aptitude. That goes big with me. Aptitude is huge in knowing how to slow the game down and control yourself.
“Plus, there’s his preparation, deception and his ability to throw four pitches for strikes. He doesn’t walk many guys. If he doesn’t get better, well … that would surprise me.”
The December 2006 trade to acquire Bannister from the Mets for reliever Ambiorix Burgos stands, at this point, as perhaps the best personnel move in general manager Dayton Moore’s 21-month tenure.
Burgos showed the same maddening inconsistency with the Mets that so wearied the Royals and their fans before blowing out his elbow. He isn’t expected to pitch again until 2009.
“It’s still got to play out over the next several years,” Moore cautioned. “I think it was a trade that, eventually, will prove to work for everybody. We needed to acquire starting pitching, and they needed some power in the bullpen to get to (Billy) Wagner.”
Bannister wasn’t an instant rookie success. He failed to make the Royals’ roster last spring and lost his first three big-league decisions after joining the club from Class AAA Omaha before going on a three-month roll.
“It was just the height of the ball,” McClure said.
“He’d get ahead of hitters and start to elevate the ball. I hate to say that it’s that simple. But looking at the video, his pitches before were 6 to 8 inches too high when he got ahead in the count.
Join the discussion
Share your observations and experiences about news. Lively, open debate is the goal, but please refrain from personal attacks or comments that are racist, vulgar or otherwise inappropriate. If you see an inappropriate comment, please click the "Report as violation" link to notify a KansasCity.com editor. Thanks for your feedback.