Chanho… Downfall from Top level to B level in a Year

‘From A to B level pitcher in an year.’

Park Chan-ho’s ‘Credit level’ of (29.Texas Rangers) in major league dropped down nearly to the bottom in one year.

U.S baseball magazine, ‘Sports weekly’, ranked Park Chan-ho as 152nd grade on 27th evaluating 233 starting pitchers of 30 teams this year. It dropped 137 grades from 15th grade last year.

‘Sports weekly’ divided starting players into A level (pitcher who pitched more than 162 in innings), B level (above 50 but below 162) and C level (below 50 in innings) and evaluated them by OPS (On base Percentage and Slugging percentage), which are combined rate of conceding running and hit.

Park Chan-ho was included in B level on the basis of pitching 145 times in 2/3 inning scoring 0.844 OPS and had big gap with the top A level, Pedro Martinez (0.562) of Boston Red Sox. In total grades, he recorded 152nd among 233 pitchers and 68th grade in B level. Park Chan-ho who recorded average 5.75 points in personal fault and 9 wins 8 losses is considered as the worse player than any other pitchers in his team such as, Hoakin Benoit (B, 47th) who won four times and Dug Davis (B, 57th) who won 3 times this year. Japanese pitcher Nomo Hideo (LA Dagers) who rose again on the basis of 16 wins and 6 losses this year ranked 40th among all pitchers.

Derik Ro (Boston) is ranked 2nd as having OPS 0.569 and Randy Johnson (Arizona Diamondbacks), who is awarded national league prize, is ranked 6th on the basis of OPS of 0.619.

‘Sports Weekly’ sharply criticized Park Chan-ho in comprehensive evaluation, commenting, “terrible.”Recalling the time when he was ranked the top among FA pitchers last year and was marked high level in each evaluation by media, he experienced ‘paradise and hell’ in a year. Though evaluation of ‘Sports Weekly’ that calculated only rate of allowing running and hit can’t be accurate, however, it is a dishonor to Park Chan-ho.

▽ OPS = It is to combined rate of allowing running and hitting. The less the rate, the better the pitcher is. It is utilized importantly as a barometer to evaluate pitcher in major league. It hasn’t been introduced in Korean pro baseball yet.

Sang-Soo Kim ssoo@donga.com