No, I'm not talking about Michael Phelps. I'm talking about Brad Ziegler. Unless you're a huge A's fan or involved in a deep fantasy baseball league, you probably have no idea who Brad Ziegler is. But he might be the greatest baseball pitcher of all time.
Huh?
Ziegler is a 28 year old rookie relief pitcher. He has now pitched 38 innings in the majors and has yet to give up a run, breaking the major league record of 25 innings without allowing a run at the start of a career. What is more, he has yet to even give up an extra base hit! That's right opposing batters are hitting 0.179 against him with a 0.179 slugging percentage.
His story is pretty interesting. He was drafted om 2003 after his senior season of college, but was released by the Phillies after throwing just 6 innings in the minors. He signed with an independent league team but soon thereafter was signed by the A's. After a few decent seasons in the minors as a starter, the A's decided he was unlikely to make the majors as a starter and asked him to changing his pitching style to throw sidearm. So between the 2006 and 2007 learned to throw sidearm and became a relief pitcher. Since then, he has thrown more than 130 innings in the majors and minors without giving up a home run. So far this season, including the minors, he has only given up 1 run, and thanks to a series of disastrous relief appearances by Huston Street, Ziegler is now the A's closer.
Apparently his pitching style is so deceptive and has so much break that hitters just can't hit the ball in the air. He doesn't strike out many guys, but all hitters can do is hit weak ground balls against him. So far in the majors he has gotten the hitter to hit into a double play about half the time that there has been a runner on first with less than two outs. That may or not not sound like a lot to you, but the all time record for a whole season is only about 35%, so he's inducing GIDPs way more than any player in history.
It is unlikely that he'll be able to continue allowing no runs, but it sure is fun to see a guy with (apparently) middling skills pitch like an all time great. I'll be very interested to see if he can sustain his success, and if so, if it will spur a whole generation of guys who can't through 90 miles an hour to try throwing sidearm.
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2 comments:
Well, so much for the scoreless inning streak: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=280814111
Guess I won't be asking you to post about any of my favorite players or teams. Curse of The Astronomer!
I knew that would happen. I should have waited until he got to 59 1/3 and passed Hershiser.
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