By R.J. Anderson //

Livan Hernandez has a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 1.06 and an ERA of 1.62. Having a good strikeout-to-walk ratio doesn’t guarantee a low ERA; evidently having a low ERA doesn’t always mean you need a killer K:BB rate either.

Still, recent history tells us that Hernandez is playing with fire. Twenty-five starting pitchers have posted full-season strikeout-to-walk ratios between 1.00 and 1.10 since 1990. Of those, exactly two finished with an ERA below 4.00. For the wave-riding owners of Hernandez’s shiny ERA, that’s bad news, unless the belief is that Hernandez can replicate Kirk McCaskill’s 1990 or Pat Rapp’s 1994. The cumulative ERA of those 25 pitchers is a less-than-stellar 4.79.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of those pitchers is some of the win totals racked up. Hernandez currently has four wins, but there’s a chance he could join the 17 of 25 who won double-digit games. Kevin Ritz won 17 games in 1996. Omar Olivares, Scott Erickson, and Steve Trachsel won 15. Three others won 13; two more won 12; three won 11; and then the rest won 10 games.

Granted, by restricting our search to pitchers who lasted a full season, we’re sure to see higher win totals than you’d expect from pitchers with lower innings totals. Those innings totals, the ability of teams to overcome iffy starting pitching, and the questionable real-world value of Wins as a pitching stat, say more about these pitchers’ ability than any dubious claims of pitching to the score ever could.

Dave Cameron of FanGraphs recently pointed out that Hernandez’s performance with runners on base isn’t even that good, yet somehow runs just aren’t being piled on…yet.

If you own Hernandez and can get any type of return on him, do it, and do it now. It’s a very safe bet to make that he will not continue to have this level of success with the way he’s pitching. If you can’t find a fool on the market, then the choice to attempt and milk out one or two more solid weeks is up to you. But be warned, when regression catches up, it will take no prisoners.

For more on Livan Hernandez and other lucky dogs, check out Bloomberg Sports’ Fantasy Tools.