Baseball Prospectus on Mark Prior’s First Two Years
Prior A Definite Two-Year Stud (Will Carroll & Nate Silver, ESPN.com, 9/26/2003)
Baseball Prospectus ranks the top 10 pitchers in terms of first two years performance. They place Mark Prior 8th. Dwight Gooden is #1.
What’s interesting about the list is that not one of the pitchers ever made the Hall-of-Fame (at least as a pitcher – Babe Ruth is 6th on the list). Of course, Prior could turn out differently. After all, he’s got those mechanics:
According to Gary Heil of the National Pitching Alliance, Prior was tested using high-tech Matrix-like technology to assess his mechanics.
“No one else was even close,” Heil said. “He’s the model; he’s perfect.”
Looking at what Prior’s done in his first two years, it’s amazing to see just how much better he’s gotten from his solid 21-year-old rookie season to his 22-year-old season. Of course, he’s thrown 11 more starts and close to 100 more innings, so his totals look more impressive. But take a look at how his rate stats have generally improved:
Year K/9IP BB/9 HR/9 ERA
2002 11.3 2.9 1.1 3.32
2003 10.4 2.1 0.6 2.43
His K rate was the only thing that got worse this year. But the 27.6% drop in his walks per nine innings rate meant that his already stellar 3.9 K/BB ratio went all the way up to 4.9 this year. And the drop in his home runs allowed rate was close to 45%.
Prior has also become more efficient. He threw 6% fewer pitches per batter and 8% fewer pitches per inning.
It’s certainly unrealistic to expect Prior to continue to improve at the rate he’s improved in his first two seasons. After all, a pitcher can only be so good. What we have with Prior is someone who’s already reached the top of his profession after having just recently turned 23 years old. Let’s hope his perfect mechanics keep him there for many years to come.