Chien-Ming Wang, SP, New York Yankees

June 21, 2007 @ 16:00:00

By Aaron Adams
Edited by Nicholas Minnix

When New York Yankees starting pitcher Chien-Ming Wang came back from a strained right hamstring April 24, he hardly resembled the pitcher who was runner-up for the Cy Young Award just last season.

The Turnaround

As of May 16, the 27-year-old Wang was finally beginning to build on his spectacular sophomore season, lowering his ERA from a lofty 5.40 to its current and impressive 3.33. He has earned six wins in seven starts since getting knocked around for seven runs in a May 10 start against the Texas Rangers.

Key to his improvement is a new approach due to a more developed arsenal of pitches, including his changeup and slider. In his May 21 outing against the Boston Red Sox, pitching coach Ron Guidry had him test a new "soft-tossing" approach in which Wang was forced to use his tremendous sinker more sparingly; he would instead mix in more of his curveball, developing slider and changeup.

The new approach has been successful, and while Wang will likely continue to rely on his sinker, this outing taught him that he was able to use his off-speed pitches to effectively get hitters out. Since that outing, Wang has begun to mix it up more often, setting up his sinker with one of his off-speed pitches. That has led to an increase in strikeouts, emphasized by a career-high 10 against the New York Mets June 17.

Fantasy Impact

Wang has the ability to sustain his current successes and could continue to see a slight increase in strikeouts per inning. Wang's career strikeouts-per-nine-innings (K/9) for his major league career entering this season was 3.31; since May 16, his K/9 has been 5.40. However, don't expect him to produce double-digit strikeouts consistently, as Wang is a groundball pitcher and doesn't have the stuff to blow hitters away.

If you held on to Wang this long or were lucky enough to pick him up, continue to plug him in your lineup, as he should have good value for the remainder of the season. He should continue to pile up wins and finish with an ERA in the 3.50-3.75 range with a WHIP under 1.30. He has the approach to be even better than that.

It may already be too late to buy low on Wang, but it doesn't hurt to try, as his owner may not be sold on his good fortune (especially if he had him in his lineup for the May 10 Rangers game). Wang has tremendous value in keeper league formats, as he is only 27 years old and is continuously improving.

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Aaron Adams
Aaron has been with KFFL since 2007.

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