THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

How much control do pitchers REALLY have?

I don’t have the answer, but I have the process.  I emailed this to someone else, and I’ll just repost it in its entirety:

Here’s a little trick to figure out how accurate are pitchers with their pitches: look at all 3-0 counts, where the batter is a pitcher (and preferably a man on 1B)

In this situation a pitcher would be out of his mind to throw anything other than a pitch down the middle.  Why in the world would he try to walk such a batter, or even tempt fate?  He’s throwing it down the middle, and he’s almost certainly throwing him a fastball.  And, the pitcher/batter is almost certainly taking as well.

I will guess that Maddux/Moyer/Schilling will still walk the batter 10% of the time, while your Dempsters and other throwers (not pitchers) will walk this batter at least 25% of the time, if not over 30%.