Zach Duke?!?

Ten starts into 2009 and Zach Duke is cruisin' . The 26 year old who is 5-4 with a 2.75 ERA, appears poised to make the first all-star game of his career. Yes, that's right, the same Zach Duke who went 18-37 in the years after his magical 2005 season when he burst onto the scene, going 8-2 with a sparkling 1.81 ERA in 14 starts. Here are his '09 numbers to date:

72 IP / 5-4 / 2.75 ERA / 42 SO / 17 BB / 1.11 WHIP / .268 BABIP / 75.9% LOB%

One of the driving forces behind his fantastic ERA has been his K/9 rate. While its still pathetic, it's sitting a 5.3 which is up from his 4.6 career K/9. Duke has kept his walks in line with his career numbers, at around 2.4 per 9 innings. The outlier is his .5 HR/9 rate which will be extremely hard to maintain for an entire season.

Duke has a discouraging batted ball trend that will not bode well with his low HR/9 rate. After inducing 51.1% groundballs in 2006, Duke's GB% has dropped each year and now sits at 45.5% for the '09 campaign. His flyball rate has increased each year from a tidy 26.4% in 2005 up to 35.5% in 2009--and more flyballs means more homeruns.

The bottom line is Duke has some fatal career trends that, with a little more time, will most likely prove to be the undoing to a brilliant first quarter of baseball. When you throw in a .267 BABIP which is nowhere close to his career .324 mark,you can be almost certain that Zach Duke will revert to his former ways, maybe worse.