As the Yankees tune the gears in the final weeks of the season and watch the scoreboard to see who they’ll be playing in October, a curious fact looms a bit larger with each passing day. Their best pitcher, and presumptive no. 1 starter in the playoffs, not only has the lowest strikeout ratio in the American League, but one far below the threshold usually considered necessary for success of any sort. Can the Yankees really win with Chien-Ming Wang?

At some point — and Wang passed that point a while ago — it’s impossible to simply write off a player’s unusual success as any sort of fluke.There are exceptions to every rule. Short right-handers aren’t supposed to hold up as ace pitchers; Roy Oswalt has nonetheless done quite well for himself. Hitters who routinely swing at balls pitched at eye level are supposed to be eaten alive, sooner or later, by their indiscipline; Vladimir Guerrero has made quite a good living in baseball and hit .300 every year for a decade. Often as not, the best players (and the worst) are precisely those who are in some way wildly unorthodox. Given the ever-increasing success Wang has had while striking out fewer than three men per nine innings, he probably falls into this category, and it’s a great thing to see. Baseball can always use more freakish and unusual performances, if nothing else to remind all of us know-it-alls that cats can be skinned more than one way.

Still, it’s easy to see why anyone might find Wang a bit worrisome as a top starter, especially given his poor performance against Boston this year. Striking out hitters is the single best thing a pitcher can do: There’s no chance for a ball to go over the fence, through a seam in the infield defense, or off an outfielder’s glove when you get the K. When you get it as rarely as he does, you have to do everything else well.You have to keep the ball down to get double plays and avoid the home run, field the position well, hold runners, and, most of all, avoid walks, wild pitches, and other mistakes. Wang is a tightrope walker: One lapse in concentration and everything can be lost.

In the long term, this will eventually be a problem. He can get away with never striking anyone out because he throws above 95 mph with great movement; eventually he’ll lose a tick on the fastball. For now, it’s not a problem, and especially not against any of the teams the Yankees will face in the playoffs. Were the Red Sox in contention, I’d be worried; happily, the Tigers, Twins, and Athletics aren’t just fairlyweak offensive clubs, but weak in all the ways that Wang can exploit.

Wang’s problem areas are pretty easy to see, whether you go by scouting or statistics: It’s that he’s so dependent on getting ahead in the count that you can jump on him early. He’s given up 11 home runs this season, three on the first pitch of the at-bat and four in 1–0 counts. The strategy is clear: If he throws something fat on the first pitch, swing from the heels; otherwise lay off, looking for that 1–0 count where he’s going to lay one in. His approach is predictable. Executing this game plan is trickier, of course; baseball’s hard. A good, disciplined approach, though, will, as always, give a hitter a fighting chance and help him avoid the terrifying prospect of a 96 mph sinker buzzing in on him on an 0–2 count.

None of the AL contenders, though, are particularly likely to be able to execute this strategy consistently. The Athletics have a fair number of disciplined hitters — Jason Kendall, Mark Kotsay, Frank Thomas, and Eric Chavez all walk about as much as they strike out — but of them, only Thomas and Chavez (who’s had a miserable, injury plagued season) are among their heavy hitters.The player to watch there would be Nick Swisher; he walks a lot and strikes out a lot. Against Wang he’s not going to strike out, one would think, which would make him a fair bit more dangerous, and at least potentially give the Athletics the kind of lineup that could do some early-count damage against Wang.

The Tigers and Twins, though, are entirely different, because as a matter of philosophy both are very aggressive teams, with lineups built around contact hitting and strikeout avoidance, both of which play into Wang’s hands. The Twins’ combo of Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer is lethal, but past that their lineup is full of guys like Torii Hunter and Michael Cuddyer, good players who are exactly the sort to walk back to the dugout after having pounded the ball into the dirt, grimacing in frustration. The Tigers are at this point a weak offensive team and constitutionally undisciplined (or aggressive, if you prefer) — just the sort of team Wang can eat alive.

Whether Wang is likely to be a longterm ace is pretty much irrelevant right now; the Yankees and their fans want another ring, and the question of whether he’s likely to make an All-Star team 10 years from now, while interesting, isn’t germane. Aces for him, I say, and best of luck to the American League.