2009 White Sox player review: John Danks

October 6, 1:00 PMChicago White Sox ExaminerJJ Stankevitz

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John Danks had success in 2009, but it was tenuous at best. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

John Danks will be just 25 next April and already has two successful seasons under his belt as a starter for the White Sox. That's the good news. The bad news is that there were some problems that Danks experienced in 2009 that will have to be fixed if he wants to have sustained success in 2010.

Key stats
GS: 32
IP: 200.1
W: 12
L: 11
ERA: 3.77
ERA+: 124
FIP: 4.60
BB: 73
BB/9: 3.28
SO: 149
K/9: 6.69
K/BB: 2.04
HR/9: 1.26
WHIP: 1.28
OPS: .726
GB/FB: 1.08
BABIP: .273
WAR: 2.9

The results Danks had in 2009 were only a touch worse than they were in 2008 (12-9, 3.32 ERA), but the way he got to those '09 results was troublesome. Danks' walk rate went up, his strikeout rate went down, and his home run rate went up—generally a recipe for disaster in a starting pitcher. What saved Danks was his .273 BABIP—if that stat had been around .290 or .300, Danks almost certainly would not have had a sub-4.00 ERA.

Some of Danks' problems could be connected to a blister problem he battled with during most of the year. This led to both control and command issues (control=throwing strikes, command=control inside the strike zone) that really burned Danks in a few starts.

Walks were issue No.1 for Danks this year. He walked three or more batters in 12 of his 32 starts this year, including two six-walk games. While high walk totals didn't always spell doom for Danks, they often cut his starts short even if he was pitching well. In those 12 starts with three or more walks, Danks maxed out at seven innings but usually only threw between five and six innings.

Danks did find a way to pitch over many of these walks—with a little bit of help from that .273 BABIP—but he's going to have to lower his walk rate back to 2008 levels if he wants to sustain success in 2010, when his BABIP likely will regress to the mean.

Issue No. 2 were home runs. If you watched any one of Danks' bad starts this year, you probably heard Hawk Harrelson mention how he needs to learn how to miss low with his changeup. It was pretty easy to tell whether or not Danks was going to struggle in a given outing based on where he was locating his changeup—if it was up, you could expect a lot of walks, hits, and/or home runs, but if it was down, you could expect anything from a solid to dominant outing.

You don't have to be a baseball genius to figure out that offspeed pitches up in the zone are going to be hit hard, but finding that release point and grip to keep them low is easier said than done. For Danks' sake, let's hope that it's something that can be chalked up to his blister issues and won't be a trend going forward. If not, he's going to have to make a significant adjustment or risk giving up a lot of walks and home runs.

Before 2009 began, I thought there was a good chance Danks would repeat his '08 success:

The only concern with Danks is how his body will respond to the innings increase he saw from 2007 (139.0 IP) to 2008 (195.0 IP). If Danks' arm doesn't break down in 2009, he should replicate his 2008 success that saw all of his peripherals go in the right direction.

Danks' arm didn't break down—in fact, he threw 5.1 innings more than he did in 2008—but he did run into some nasty blisters during the year. I don't know how long those blisters really affected Danks, but I'm willing to chalk up at least a portion of his struggles with control and command to blisters. Throwing a baseball requires being able to have a good 'feel' for the ball—especially a changeup and cutter, Danks' bread-and-butter—and having a blister can severely limit that 'feel' for the ball.

This can lead to loss of control and velocity, both of which we saw in Danks this year. Hopefully, Danks' blister problem isn't recurring—because if it pops up again in 2010, you can probably expect to see the same kind of struggles Danks had in 2009.

But, you know, if Danks struggling means he *only* has a 3.77 ERA, there's really nothing to be too disappointed about. He's still very young and has a whole lot of time to potentially develop into a top-of-the-line starter. The advantage is that he'll be counted on to be the No. 4 starter for the Sox next year, and if he returns to his '08 levels...yikes. That would theoretically give the White Sox the best starting rotation they have had since 2005.