Yankees: The 5 best pitching seasons of the 21st century in the Bronx
By Ryan Morik
Chien-Ming Wang, 2006, 6.0 WAR
Chien-Ming Wang is one of the game’s best one-year wonders.
Maybe one-and-a-half. 2007 wasn’t too bad.
However, 2006 was his one elite season – outside of his 76 strikeouts that year.
In fact, his 76 strikeouts were tied for the second-lowest among qualified starters.
But in 2006, he led all of baseball with just 0.5 home runs allowed per nine innings. He led the majors the following year, too, with 0.6 HR/9.
Wang was not overpowering by any stretch, but his 20.9 hard-hit percentage allowed was the second-best in baseball among qualified starters. His 14.4 soft-hit percentage was the 11th-best mark in baseball that year.
His 6.0 WAR was the fourth-best among pitchers that year, while 19 wins that season were tied with Johan Santana, that year’s Cy Young Award winner, for the most in baseball.
Of course, Wang got hurt rounding the bases in Houston — man, Houston’s been hurting the Yankees longer than we thought — and he was never able to return to similar form.
From 2009 through his retirement, he owned a 6.01 ERA with the Yankees, Nationals, Blue Jays, and Royals.
A documentary about him was released in 2018, and it won the People’s Choice Award for Best Overall Feature at that year’s Vancouver Asian Film Festival.
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