MLB Players of the Week: Ozuna’s has a power surge and Shields saves the Royals’ week
By JJ Keller
AL Pitcher: James Shields, RHP, Kansas City Royals
I ended up going with the two shutout performances of Shields, over the slightly more impressive FIP of Corey Kluber. Even as a sabermetric-minded guy, I see the value in not allowing any runs, especially when it is over 15 innings.
Shields’ first start was an 8.1 inning shutout, in which he allowed 3 hits and no walks, striking out 6. His next outing was shorter, at 7 innings, but was equally as impressive. He gave up no runs on 2 hits, a walk and 8 strikeouts. That combines for 15.1 innings, no runs, 5 hits, 1 walk and 14 strikeouts. He was one of six starters over the week to not allow any runs, but the only one to do so over two starts.
And though I mentioned there being better FIP performances, he was still impressive in that regard. His 1.68 FIP ranked 4th in the AL over the week. However, two of the better FIPs belong to starters who only made one outing, while another had an ERA of 2.16, which for me, took him out of the running.
That leaves Shields and Kluber, and as stated before, I felt the gap in ERA in favor of Shields outweighed the small advantage that Kluber had in FIP.
The Royals won just three of their seven games, and two of those came in Shields’ outing. The first one, coming on September 5th, was a 1-0 victory, which really puts into perspective how important Shields’ dominance was. If he doesn’t pitch as well as he did, the Royals probably lose.