Jeremy Affeldt is a good relief pitcher but many people are distracted by one thing, 1.73.
That was his ERA in 2010.
His next best season was a 3.33 ERA season. This is not to say that pitchers can't put it together all of a sudden and become dominate forces, I am saying that this was an outlier and a deviation from his true talent level.
If you look at his last 3 seasons and look at the pitching stats that try to strip out things beyond a pitchers control it becomes fairly obvious that one season does not look like the rest.
Year BB/9 SO/9 SO/BB
2008 2.9 9.2 3.20
2009 4.5 7.9 1.77
2010 4.3 7.9 1.83
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/29/2011.
If you take a glance at his peripheral stats you would expect that his 2008 should have been the best season, and it was according to the advanced pitching statistics. However 2009 is looked at as the superior season because of the sparkling ERA...
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