Remember Lucas Harrell? The human pitch count? Watching him pitch was painful, like watching the first year of kid pitch baseball. You had absolutely no idea where the ball was going to end up once he let it go. Except one thing. You knew it was going to end up out of the strike zone. Somehow the Rangers won when he started. It helped that he started against the Astros, America’s patsies.Today, let’s relive the agony of Lucas Harrell, another Jon Daniels scrap heaper.

*****

NUMBERS FIB.
Originally published August 8, 2016.

Sabermetricians must hate Lucas Harrell. He single-handedly upends everything they stand for. They are all about numbers. And his numbers paint a really ugly picture.

Look at the mess he has created:

Starts: 2
Innings: 9.2
Hits: 9
ER: 4
BB: 8
K: 7
Pitches: 186
Strikes: 92
Balls: 94
WHIP: 1.76

Those numbers are abysmal. He has thrown more balls than strikes. If he had enough innings to qualify, his WHIP would be the worst in the American League. He came out of the game in the fourth inning having thrown ninety-two pitches.

Yet he is 1-0. And the Rangers have won both of his starts.

And when it is all said and done, of the millions of stats in baseball that are divided and re-divided and crunched and shredded and calculated and re-calculated ad nauseam, the only one that matters is W.

And his team is perfect in both of his starts.

How?

Magic.

Oh, and Jonathan Lucroy.