Royals and K's

Ron Hostetter alerted me to Joe Posnanski's article on the Royals lack of strikeout pitchers. He also mentions that this should affect the long term evaluation of Jimmy Gobble as I articulated in a post last August. There I found that of young pitchers of comparable ability, the higher strikeout rate pitchers had careers almost twice as long and won more than twice as many games and that pitchers with long careers generally have above average strikeout rates when they're young.

In addition to Gobble, Miguel Asencio (4.45/9) and Kyle Snyder (4.11/9) are other suspects the Royals should look at when it comes to low strikeout rates. Joe didn't mention, however, that Tankersley's strikeout rate in AAA actually dropped last season more than two strikeouts per game while still managing to strike out 29 in 35 innings for the Padres.

From the article....Royals Strikeout Leaders since 2000

2000: Mac Suzuki, 135 (ranked 50th in majors)
2001: Jeff Suppan 120 (ranked 69th)
2002: Paul Byrd, 129 (ranked 53rd)
2003: Darrell May, 115 (ranked 72nd)
2004: Darrell May, 120 (ranked 67th)