Harang has been his usual self this spring, dominating hitters, getting Ks, putting up zeroes. But one stat that has stuck out has been his ground-out to fly-out ration. Historically he has been neutral in this category, with his ratio sitting right around 1 for the past four seasons (1.05, .95, 1.04, 1.00 in 2004-2007 respectively). However, this spring, his ratio is .52 with 31 fly-outs to only 16 ground-outs (as of the 5th inning today). This is an extremely small sample size, yes, but is it predictive of things to come? Last spring, Harang’s GO/AO ratio was skewed in the opposite direction, which I took as a good sign. In a ballpark like Great American, ground balls are always preferable. Is this new fly-out trend something to be concerned about, or is it simply spring and a small sample size? I’m simply curious, because I’ve been noticing high GO-AO numbers in the past few box scores (for example, today its 2-8).
