Mar
20

The worm killer learns from the K man

By

In 2008, no one in the AL struck out more hitters than A.J. Burnett, and only Tim Lincecum in the NL and CC Sabathia in two leagues topped Burnett’s 231 K’s. In an effort to spread the strike out wealth, Burnett has been coaching Chien-Ming Wang on the finer points of mixing and matching pitches. Wang’s progress this year will be one of the more compelling Yankee pitching stories. He’s not the team’s number one starter, and his heavy sinker provides a great contrast to Joba Chamberlain, Sabathia and Burnett’s strike out-oriented approach. If Wang can up those K/9 IP numbers just a tick, the Yanks’ pitching will be that much better.

Categories : Asides, Pitching

25 Comments»

  1. Colombo says:

    Wow…all those “AJ is a bad teammate” stories are looking like real BS these days…

  2. Joe R says:

    After reading the title I thought Kei Igawa beat someone up. I was excited.

  3. Simon B. says:

    Here’s something I hope AJ does:

    I was just looking at his Player Card, and his sinker actually sinks more than Wang’s. It’s also only about a mile slower than his 4-seamer. He should almost completely adopt it as his only fastball and he’d probably get a lot more groundballs (he already is pretty good there).

  4. Mike Pop says:

    I <3 A.J.

    But seriously, could be a good thing. Especially with the damn Jeter manning SS!!! And that bum A-Rod manning 3rd, we have no infield defense, oh noeesss. Could save a couple runs. Thank god Cody Ransom is filling in for a while, we need grits.

    Grits=Glory.

  5. Cor Shep says:

    I got an email from the Yankees saying I won the opportunity to buy Yankee tickets on March 23!! Anyone else?

  6. Ross says:

    Oh thank GOD. When I first read the title, I thought you were saying that Wang is learning from Kei Igawa… Noooooooooooooooo

  7. Matt says:

    I definitely want Wang to strike more dudes out, but I remember reading an article somewhere early in the off-season that said Wang actually got the most help from his defenders of anyone in the league. So maybe that sinker is even more effective than we thought.

Leave a Reply

You may use <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> in your comment.

If this is your first time commenting on River Ave. Blues, please review the RAB Commenter Guidelines. Login for commenting features. Register for RAB.