Shelby Miller is berry berry good. My prediction is that he wins the National League rookie-of-the-year this year. Right now he's 3-1 in four starts with a 2.16 ERA and 26 strikeouts in 25 innings. Wow!
To give points of comparison, in 1967 at age 22 (Miller's age), Tom Seaver won the RoY, going 16-13 with 170 strikeouts in 251 innings and with a 2.76 ERA. Twenty years later in 1987, Dwight Gooden was 22 and went 15-7 with 148 Ks in 179 innings and a 3.21 ERA.
If Miller gets 32 starts he's on pace for 24-8 with 208 Ks in 200 innings.
I'm just sayin'.
***
On the other hand, by the time Gooden was 22, he had already won the RoY (at 19) and the Cy Young (at 20). Here's Gooden's stats in that 20 year-old season:
24 wins, 4 losses
1.53 ERA
16 complete games
8 shutouts
268 Ks in 276 innings!!
You will never ever ever see a line like that for a 20 year-old pitcher. Not ever. They are too valuable... witness what happened with Strasburg last year. No one would let a 20 year-old arm go 276 innings.
Gooden was a sad story. He had 91 victories, a RoY, a Cy Young, and four All-Star appearances before he turned 24. If he had pitched another 15 years and averaged, say, 16 victories a year, he would have ended up with 330+ and been a sure-fire Hall of Famer. A lot of the blame goes to his own choices -- drugs, alcohol, the fast life. But you have to wonder whether too much success too soon took a toll on both his character and his arm.
No comments:
Post a Comment