Command & Conquer

I was looking at Jonathan Sanchez's game log, because it just seemed to me that each time he went out to pitch, there was a sameness to his starts:

			IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	SO	GB	FB	Pit
			5.0	2	1	0	0	6	7	4	5	103
			5.0	2	2	2	0	3	5	6	6	86
			6.1	2	3	2	0	4	4	9	8	96
			6.0	7	3	3	1	2	9	5	11	109
			5.0	4	1	1	0	2	7	5	6	94
			5.2	7	4	2	0	3	8	6	10	97

Easy enough to see...his starts have all finished more or less within an inning of each other. At either the start of the 6th or 7th inning, he's done. He uses so many pitches either striking people out or walking them, it's hard to let him continue out of fear that he's gassed, or fear that he'll somehow figure out to issue four walks in only two plate appearances*.

This is hardly anything new -- these starts best represent who Sanchez is as a pitcher. Still though, it starts to get odd after a while that he doesn't have a more extreme start in there yet; one where he puts it all together and takes past the 7th inning, or one where he completely unravels and and gets pulled after 3 or 4 innings.

It's still early, of course, but Sanchez's numbers are either impressive or alarming, depending on where one's eyes wander on his stat page:

• K/9 - 10.91, highest strikeout rate of his career
• BB/9 - 5.45, highest walk rate of his career
• HR/9 - 0.27, lowest HR rate of his career
• OPS Against - .607, lowest of his career
• OBP - .091, lowest of his career**

Six starts aren't anything to base many conclusions on, if any, but one of two things is bound to happen soon: 1) either all those walks are going to catch up with him and he's going to put out a stinker, or 2) he's going to get it under control and he's going to throw a gem.

*don't put it past him...the man's a world champion, you know
**alright, so that isn't alarming at all, but I needed something else for shock value, and besides, you should've seen the looks on your faces as you tried to figure out how I was going to make Sanchez's hitting stats relevant