Quote:
Originally Posted by BobC
In all fairness, part of the reason for that big ERA drop could be from switching to a new league where none of the batters had seen him before. But those are still major league hitters, and as good as Johnson was, I can't ever see such a move creating that big of a change in his ERA in such a short of a period of time. Unless maybe he had some type of injury or something during the first part of that year that contributed to the higher ERA? But I'm not aware of any such thing. It doesn't look good for Johnson otherwise though.
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Johnson complained about his back the entire first half of the season and visibly wasn't giving full effort when pitching. All that magically disappeared when he went to Houston. The assistant GM for the Mariners all but stated as much (that Johnson tanked) at the time.