Wang = New Steve Blass?

[SecretMaster]

Of course it is still very early in the season, but honestly. 3 horrendous starts with a massive 34.50 ERA. Hopefully he'll be able to get it back under his control but I imagine his confidence must be shattered at this point. Just for reference I'm not a Yankee's fan, I'm more of a "root for the underdog" fan. So right now I'm still favoring the Ray's, I hope they can prove themselves to be a damn good team. But still, it is interesting to see a great pitcher off to a terrible start.

[ifittakesforever]

Wang's not really walking everyone, he's just getting hit extremely hard, 23 hits in 6 innings pitched. After looking at Blass's stats on baseball reference, I'm amazed they kept running him out there as bad as he was pitching in 1973. Blass started 18 games that year. Imagine if they keep running Wang out there for 15 more starts.

[chasscF1]

Wang doesn't seem to have lost his confidence, he keeps saying that everything is fine. He's coming off and injury and this has led to other issues. His mechanics are off. I think its a little early to write him off. He's on the DL now anyway.

[derFunkenstein]

The big thing is that Wang, IMO, is still hurt. It was reported over the weekend (but I can't find the link) that he has fatigue in some area of his hip muscles. As a result, you're not going to get the drive that healthy legs can get you, with a corresponding decrease in velocity and movement. If your sinker don't sink, and if it's only going about 88 mph, you're going to get hit. Hard.

[ifittakesforever]

Especially when the sinker seems to be his only pitch. One game early in the season the announcers were comparing Wang to Derek Lowe and saying how both rely on the sinker, however Lowe has other pitches that he uses also to keep hitters off balance. Wang appears to only have a non-sinking sinker that is getting crushed with regularity this season.

[Rakhmaninov3]

Also, he's been pitching in New Yankee Stadium where there's apparently a wind channel that carries pop-ups hit to right field out of the park. There were 25 home runs in the first 5 games at the stadium because of this. There have been even more since--I read where the owners are going to have to consider making changes to the stadium to fix this little (and by little I mean HUGE) problem.