A week ago, Chien-Ming Wang faced the Red Sox, and pitched brilliantly, last night he faced those very same Red Sox, and pitched horribly. So I went looking for what went wrong.
Watching the game last night, it was easy to assume that Wang didn’t have command of his sinker, and as a result was falling behind batters more often than he usually does. Except it isn’t that simple.
Last night Wang faced 24 batters, and in his previous start agains Boston he faced 29 batters. In both starts he had eleven Plate Appearances that were resolved when he was behind in the count.
In the start last week, the Red Sox got on base ONCE in those 11 situations, and last night they got on base 8 times in those situations. So Wang wasn’t really pitching from behind all that more often last night, the problem was he was surrendering walks in those situations, which he usually doesn’t do, and when the balls were put in play yesterday they were going for hits at and extremely high rate.
Game BABIP
11-Apr 0.074
16-Apr 0.474
A fluky thing for sure, two extremes in back to back games. And it illustrates why Wang has to continue working on his strikeout pitches.
