If you haven't heard it yet,
South Side Sox has audio of Kenny Williams' interview with Mike North on The Score. Williams' comments are well worth listening to Mike North, whose voice makes my speakers vibrate. Man, I'm glad he didn't get the Sox radio job.
At any rate, there's one item that particularly made me think, and it's when Williams talks about how McCarthy's repertoire isn't well suited to U.S. Cellular Field. Williams says about John Danks and Gio Gonzalez that "they both have movement -- and it's key in our ballpark -- they both have movement on their fastballs and sink on their fastballs to be able to get you a ground ball and keep the ball in the ballpark."
They go on to discuss that McCarthy's fastball was pretty straight, which is true, and that might cripple him in such a small park. Fair point, but then again as I've said before, Danks' home run rates were far worse in the minors. Danks gave up 1.41 home runs per nine innings, while McCarthy surrendered 1.11. But what I didn't do was look up how their respective minor league parks played into it.
Well, that doesn't favor Danks either. Here's what
the park factors say in terms of home runs:
McCarthy- 26.0 IP, 2 HR at Birmingham (0.54)
- 119.1 IP, 16 HR at Charlotte (1.47)
Danks- 69.1 IP, 11 HR at Frisco (0.95)
- 70.2 IP, 11 HR at Oklahoma (0.68)
Danks' homer rates mean that he'd give up around 18-19 homers if he pitched 119 innings at either level in friendlier parks, and that should be a significant warning flag. On the other hand, when
looking at his game log, I could maybe kinda sorta start to see where Williams is coming from.
After receiving a promotion to Triple-A midway through the season, Danks struggled in the early going, but ended up giving up only one gopher ball in his last 31 1/3 innings. Meanwhile, he induced totals of
70 grounders, 30 line drives and 60 fly balls in Triple-A, which isn't a bad split.
So he's got that going for him, but should Danks start out in Charlotte next year as expected, we'll have a far better idea of how the two stack up. Not only will Danks play his home games in McCarthy's park, but he'll also be McCarthy's age (22).