Today I have a post at Camden Chat about Kevin Gausman on why his high ERA seems like a cause for concern, but it’s really not.
Because looking beyond the surface shows that Gausman is very close to the same pitcher he was last year, and in some ways he’s even better. How so? His swinging strike rate is up 1.5 percentage points, his strikeout rate is up 1.1 percentage points, and his walk rate is down 1.8 percentage points. When combined, his K-BB% is 2.8 percentage points better than last year’s, going from below league-average to above league-average. These are signs that he’s developing as a pitcher. His groundball rate has also increased a tick.