Beating the System: Brian Bannister

Growing up, I wasn't what you would call the star of my teams. There's only one team I have ever been on where I could maybe, possibly say that I was the best player, and that was a really bad team. I started pitching when I was 9 years old. I wanted to pitch when I was eight, but only one eight year old pitched on that team, and it wasn't me. It was an eight year old who looked twelve, who my eleven year old self feared three years later whenever I knew he would be pitching against me, and with whom my fourteen year old self was glad be teammates again. He, for the greater part of our youth, was the fireballer on the mound who no one wanted to face. I, from the time I was fourteen all the way through college, was the unimposing, right-handed, "other" pitcher who opposing teams were happy to draw, thinking they had caught a break.

They hadn't, but thinking they had probably played right into my hands. There really wasn't anything too impressive about me as pitcher. I didn't throw hard, that's for sure. But velocity is only one of the components to being a successful pitcher. It's practically universally accepted that there are four altogether, and here they are, in no particular order: Velocity (how hard the ball is thrown), Location (throwing it where you want to throw it), Movement, (making it curve, slide, cut, sink, split, knuckle, or explode), and Changing Speeds (throwing some hard and some harder). Coaches and scouts always said that none of those four aspects of pitching was more important than the others. Guys like me though, know the truth. When they come up a hand-held device for scouts that measures anything other than velocity, let me know. People would always say that I didn't throw hard enough to be effective and I spent most of my time proving them wrong. And that brings me to Brian Bannister.

Brian Bannister is a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals. Last year, in his rookie season, he put up numbers that placed him in contention for the American League Rookie of the Year. His Earned Run Average (ERA) was 3.87. He won 12 games (which no Royals pitcher had done in five years). And he did it with less than average Major League stuff. Even Bannister himself admits, "I know I’m just a guy with average ability. I’m trying to pitch in the major leagues, against the best hitters in the world. I’m pitching against guys who are like 7 feet tall and can throw 98 mph and have sliders that explode. I mean, seriously, look at me. What am I doing here?"

What is he doing here? Multiple sources say that he is wicked smart. He received a perfect score on the math section of his SAT, and graduated cum laude from USC. And that is why I love this guy. Too often you see pitchers that can throw the ball through a barn wall, provided they can actually hit its broad side -- guys with "million-dollar arms and ten-cent noggins," to borrow a phrase I read somewhere. Not Bannister. He knows who he is, and he's smart enough, and has studied enough to know who he's facing, probably better than they know themselves.

Despite his staggering intellect and his promising rookie season, the geeks (and I say geeks in the most endearing sense of the word) behind Baseball Prospectus have projected that Bannister will have quite the sophomore slump this year with an ERA of 5.19, and a 6-8 win-loss record. They attribute this to his freakishly low BABIP (batting average of balls in play) of .264 from a season ago. The League average is .303, so with a less than stellar walk to strikeout ratio, Baseball Prospectus basically thinks his luck will run out this season. Bannister disagrees, and he's aiming to prove them wrong.

This afternoon was the chance he had to do so, and just like any other test he's ever taken, he flew through this one with near-perfect results. Going head to head with Detroit's potent offense, you might figure it to be a long afternoon for this pitcher who looks more like a guy who should be crunching numbers at a desk than punching out Major Leaguers, but not today. Bannister threw seven innings, striking out four, walking none, allowing no runs, and only three hits. His current ERA of 0.00, and record of 1-0 seem like the perfect start to a season in which Brian Bannister takes on the stat men and wins.