Denver veteran left-handed starting pitcher, Erik Sloan, the MGL's Pitcher of the Year in 1972, has a record of 8-4 with a 3.03 ERA thus far in 1975.
Those are nice numbers. On the surface one would say that Sloan is having a fine year.
Actually, though, he's having a tremendous year.
If you dig a bit deeper, you see that Sloan's WAR of 4.6 is tied with teammate Sadahige Kawasaki and L.A.'s Matt Stagner for 2nd best in the MGL, his 3 shutouts also place him in a tie for 2nd, he leads in K/BB rate- by a good margin- at 5.4, his BB/9 being 1st at 1.1 and his K/9 ranking 6th at 5.7. His WHIP of 0.98 is the only one below 1 in the league (with teammate Kawasaki second at 1.07), his FIP of 2.62 is also easily best (2nd is Kawasaki at 2.89, 3rd is Lee at 2.94, 4th is Steve Green at 3.12- in other words, the Brewers own this category), and his opponent BA is .233, 5th best in the league. And this with a BABIP against of .269, which might seem a bit low, but is exactly his career average. With his FIP- of 63 and his rWAR of 4.0, don't be fooled by his traditional stats.
Erik Sloan isn't a good pitcher in 1975- he's one of the best!