When the Braves traded Edgar Renteria for Jair Jurrjens and Gorkys Hernandez, it was initially puzzling that the Braves were so high on Jurrjens because his K/9 rate in the minors was so low as compared to some of the young pitchers we keep hearing about with the Yankees and Red Sox. Trying to find a way to feel good about Jurrjens, I found two successful major leaguers with similar minor league statistics to Jurrjens: Fausto Carmona and Chien-Ming Wang.
Compare some key minor league stats for the three:
| Pitcher | ERA | H9 | HR9 | BB9 | K9 | K/BB | WHIP |
| Chien-Ming Wang | 3.37 | 8.90 | 0.45 | 2.03 | 7.06 | 3.47 | 1.21 |
| Fausto Carmona | 3.41 | 9.14 | 0.65 | 1.68 | 5.77 | 3.43 | 1.20 |
| Jair Jurrjens | 3.21 | 8.53 | 0.50 | 2.17 | 7.24 | 3.34 | 1.19 |
The similarities are self explanatory. Unfortunately, the groundball to fly ball ratios for minor leaguers are not as available or as reliable as I’d like in making this comparison, and obviously that’s pretty important since what makes Carmona and Wang great is the ability to keep the ball down. Wang and Carmona respectively have phenomenal 2.90 and 3.00 groundball to fly ball ratios during their major league careers.
From the minor league data that is available through minorleaguesplits.com since 2005 for groundballs, line drives, and fly balls given up, here are the performance numbers for Carmona and Jurrjens as minor leaguers:
| Pitcher | GRD | LD | FLY | TOTAL | GRD% |
| Carmona | 348 | 86 | 181 | 615 | 56.6% |
| Jurrjens | 620 | 135 | 355 | 1110 | 55.9% |
Their groundball percentages are virtually identical. Jurrjens has said several times this spring that he aims to be an effective and efficient pitcher by pitching to contact and keeping the ball down. Pitching to contact may not be such a bad thing for Jurrjens, especially under the tutelage of his current pitching coach, the former sinkerballer Roger McDowell. Tim Hudson (2.76 G/F) and Peter Moylan (2.51 G/F) did a superb job in 2007 of killing worms all season long while working with McDowell.
Jurrjens has a fastball and a changeup that both have sink. Whether he can match the results of Wang and Carmona remains to be seen. Jurrjens was actually much more successful than Wang and Carmona during their respective stints in AA. Here are their AA performances:
| Pitcher | IP | ERA | WHIP | H9 | BB9 | K9 | K/BB |
| Jurrjens | 179.7 | 3.26 | 1.31 | 9.17 | 2.60 | 7.36 | 2.83 |
| Carmona | 183.7 | 4.41 | 1.43 | 10.88 | 2.01 | 6.03 | 3.00 |
| Wang | 231 | 4.36 | 1.35 | 9.94 | 2.26 | 6.78 | 3.00 |
If Jurrjens can be 75 to 80% as good as Carmona and Wang have recently been, the Braves will be pleased with what they received for Edgar Renteria.
