When Dan Szymborsi’s
2021 ZiPS projections came out for the Blue Jays back in November, one of the interesting things in addition to the actual forecasts themselves is the #1 player comp. In particular, especially for some of the younger players, some of the comps really stuck out to me for various reasons. I thought I’d dig into them a little deeper, and having looked at core hitters yesterday, we’ll finish with pitchers and circle back to a few other hitters as well.
Hyun-Jin Ryu Herb Pennock
This is an interesting comp, in the sense that Pennock was a dead ball era lefty who pitched very little before his age 25 season, mostly as a swingman. Then he had a 10 year run as a frontline starting pitcher in the 1920s (84 ERA-), though his average of 237 innings a year was well short of what aces in the day generally pitched. Likewise, Ryu has been excellent but not piled up the innings at the major league level.