Igawa's ERC

Well, got the Home Run data for Igawa for 2006. He gave up 17 long balls, a rate of 1 every 12.3 innings. Not bad. Anyway, this lets us use some of his peripherals to roughly calculate his ERC.

	IP	Hits	BB	HR	K	HBP	ERC	ERA
Japan	209	180	55	17	194	6	2.69	2.97
MLB	209	194	59	21	171	6	3.19

Just to compare, his expected ERC of 3.19 in the Majors would have ranked 8th in the league, ahead of such pitchers such as Roy Oswalt (3.22), John Smoltz (3.34), and Carlos Zambrano (3.37). As you might have guessed, Johan Santana led the league last year with an ERC of 2.36.

Now, this isn't to say that Igawa would be the 8th best pitcher in the league. That would be a highly unrealistic expectation. This is just one measure of a pitcher's ability, and I would imagine there are plenty of other factors that would go into making the transition from THE NPB to the MLB.