While early Spring hitting statistics offer the often-times false sense of security, the early pitching ones offer almost nothing. Three turns through the rotation and most starters have fewer than 10 inning so work. There is close to nothing that anyone can read into pitching stats with so few innings of work. That didn't stop me from trying though.
I sorted by Ks, a counting stat that is a part of one of the most popular peripheral pitching stats used by most saavy baseball projectioners. I was shocked to see the two pitchers leading in Ks. The first is sub-100K/200+ IP groundballer Aaron Cook of the Colroado Rockies, and the other is Mets' cast-off Aaron Heilman.
Is either of these early Spring K leaders showing us something we should value as fantasy drafts begin to take place?
| Player | Team | IP | K | BB | GO/FO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aaron Cook | COL | 14 | 15 | 3 | 1.25 |
| Aaron Heilman | CHC | 8 | 12 | 2 | 4.50 |
| Randy Johnson | SF | 8.1 | 12 | 3 | 1.40 |
| Micah Owings | CIN | 10.2 | 12 | 2 | 0.75 |
| Brett Cecil | TOR | 8 | 10 | 2 | 2.25 |
| Roy Halladay | TOR | 9 | 10 | 2 | 5.00 |
| Jason Hammel | TB | 9 | 10 | 1 | 0.67 |
| Jordan Zimmermann | WSH | 8.1 | 10 | 2 | 2.40 |
| Jesse Chavez | PIT | 3.2 | 9 | 0 | NA |
| John Danks | CWS | 7 | 9 | 1 | 1.60 |
| Tommy Hanson | ATL | 6 | 9 | 2 | 0.80 |