Crown Crazed's own Tom Backus wrote 10 predictions for the 2012 Kansas City Royals, with No. 7 being that Luke Hochevar will finally become a consistent pitcher. I'm with Backus and think fans will finally see why the Royals selected Hochevar with the No. 1 draft pick in 2006. If you look at Hochevar's 2011 stats, nothing will blow you away. He finished 11-11, notched a 4.68 ERA and had 128 strike outs with 62 walks in a career-most 198.0 innings. If you break these numbers down, though, Hochevar was much better in the second half of the season. ERA -- 1st: 5.46 2nd: 3.52 K's per 9 -- 1st: 4.6 2nd: 7.7 K/BB ratio -- 1st: 1.58 2nd: 2.83 Those numbers are drastic improvements for Hochevar. The key to these improvements was eliminating that one horrible inning that seemed to haunt Hochevar in the first half of the season. Whenever he would be rolling along, Hochevar would break down for one inning, allowing the other team to hang a large, crooked number on the scor...
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April 04, 2012
