Since my run-in with Newport’s own Jered Weaver on Masters Sunday, he’s done something historic and incredible to say the least.
On Monday, Weaver became the first pitcher to win his sixth game of the season by April 25 and is one of only five pitchers to win their sixth by the end of April. Granted the baseball season starts earlier than it did years ago, but it’s an amazing accomplishment nonetheless.
To put his amazing start in perspective, let’s look at some of the numbers: The Angels have 14 total wins, so Weaver’s six account for 43 percent of the Angels victories. In six starts this season he has six wins and has gone at least 6.1 innings in each start while never giving up more than two earned runs. His last two starts are both complete games where he’s gone 18 innings, given up one earned run and struck out 18.
The highest his ERA has been this season is 1.30, and it currently rests at a league best 0.99 in 45.2 IP. He also leads the majors in strikeouts (49) after leading all of baseball in 2010 with 233. He’s beaten the Royals, the Rays, the Blue Jays, the White Sox, the Rangers, and the A’s and looks to continue his dominance against the Rays again this weekend.
If you aren’t impressed by those numbers since it’s a small sample size then you should know that Weaver notched his 70th career victory, all with the Angels, with a better winning percentage (.642) than anybody in the 50-year history of the club. He bested the .588 mark by a guy you might have heard of, Nolan Ryan.
It’s obviously still very early in the season, but if Weaver manages to keep up even a percentage of this pace, he’ll remain in the talks for the AL Cy Young award throughout the season. If he manages to win the award he’ll be the third Angel to do so joining Bartolo Colon in 2005 and Dean Chance in 1964.
Since he’ll be a free agent after the 2012 season lots of people have already began talking about that team on the other coast that steals/buys everybody else’s players, which is absolute lunacy. Newport already lost one of its favorite Angels starting pitchers, John Lackey, to the BoSox before the 2010 season and we don’t need to lose another one of our favorites to the – it’s difficult to even say – Yankees.
One of the bloggers at Halos Heaven pointed out a very interesting series of numbers: 93, 94, 91, 94, 93, 79, 92, 80, 76, 80. Those numbers represent the speed of the pitches on which Weaver recorded his strikeouts Monday night. Seeing a range from 76-94 is a great sign for Angels fans. Weaver is mixing up his pitches and is able to strike out batters with all of them. Getting to 30 wins for the season is probably out of the question, but 20-25 seems like a sure thing.
