Masahiro Tanaka is coming to the states and promises to get the biggest free agent contract of any pitcher this offseason. Some of his value has to do with how young he is (just 25 years old on opening day), and more has to do with how good he has been in Japan.
How good will he be in the majors though? Time will tell, but teams have to take a crack at a valuation of him right now.
This post is my crack at figuring out what Tanaka is worth.
Showing posts with label Yu Darvish. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yu Darvish. Show all posts
Perfect Problem
Yu Darvish nearly pitched a perfect game last night. Here's the evidence that he wasn't perfect:
Perfect games haven't quite become common place, but they are more common now than ever before. There had never been more than one perfect game in a season before 2010. Last year, there were three. For some perspective there weren't any perfect games from 1968 to 1981, a stretch of over a decade. Yu Darvish nearly pitched the sixth perfect game in the last two seasons, plus two games (and that total doesn't count the one Armando Galarraga lost on a blown call at first base).
On some level, perfect games are fluky. They are extreme outliers by definition, with them being perfect and all. Looking for patterns in extremes is a bit destined for failure for a number of reasons (sample size being one of the biggest). Still, it certainly seems like there is something about the modern game that allows for more perfect games. I decided to look for an explanation.
Perfect games haven't quite become common place, but they are more common now than ever before. There had never been more than one perfect game in a season before 2010. Last year, there were three. For some perspective there weren't any perfect games from 1968 to 1981, a stretch of over a decade. Yu Darvish nearly pitched the sixth perfect game in the last two seasons, plus two games (and that total doesn't count the one Armando Galarraga lost on a blown call at first base).
On some level, perfect games are fluky. They are extreme outliers by definition, with them being perfect and all. Looking for patterns in extremes is a bit destined for failure for a number of reasons (sample size being one of the biggest). Still, it certainly seems like there is something about the modern game that allows for more perfect games. I decided to look for an explanation.