Match Game Answers

A. Greg Maddux
B. John Smoltz
C. CC Sabathia
D. Roger Clemens
E. Ben Sheets
F. Jake Peavy
G. Boof Bonser
H. Dontrelle Willis
I. Kerry Wood
J. Tim Wakefield
K. Francisco Liriano
L. Jason Jennings

Neat fun, this match game! What's interesting to me isn't just that some great pitchers struggled as youngsters, but the degree to which their young selves often didn't often even resemble their older selves. Greg Maddux and CC Sabathia had rough times finding the plate and Ben Sheets didn't miss that many bats. Obviously, rookie-ish pitchers with crazy breakout performances aren't impossible, but I think that Liriano/Verlander/Weaver really raised the expectations of a lot of fans last year. TINSTAAPP was always silly, but now it's been largely disregarded except by the GMs that would get canned if they put five 23 year olds in their rotation on opening day.

That's of course, almost what I want Terry Ryan to do in 2008 as I'd be totally pleased to see Santana playing the part of wiley vet along with Francisco Liriano (24), Matt Garza (24), Boof Bonser (26) and some combination of Glen Perkins (25), Kevin Slowey (24), or Brian Duensing (25). Speaking of Duensing, he's put up a 2.56 ERA in 91.1 IP at Rochester this season. He doesn't seem to be regarded as the higher profile pitching prospect on the level of all the other Twins I've named here, but he looks like a fine candidate for a back-of-the-rotation guy as he strikes out a few guys, keeps the ball in the park and doesn't walk many batter. Furthermore, he's slightly interesting for a shift in his peripherals since being promoted to Rochester when he turned into a fairly extreme groundball pitcher. The delightful minorleaguesplits.com confirms this as his balls-in-play are distributed as 120 on the ground and 104 in the air compared to a 72:85 ratio at New Britain. He's not getting particularly lucky either, posting a fairly average .302 batting average on balls in play.

So do we believe a pitcher can change personalities in this way? I'm not a scout, but when I think of groundball specialists, I think of big, tall, righthanders and not 5'11" lefties like Duensing. The great ones are anomalies, but the good ones are usually predictable and he's a bit weird for my taste. But depth is depth and Minnesota could have enough MLB-ready starters to fill Rochester's rotation so it's not like everybody's waiting with baited breath to see if Duensing becomes the next... Kenny Rogers? I don't know. He's a bit taller but that was the best I could do.