THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Monday, May 23, 2011

Pull rate on flyballs

You pull a ball on the ground, you make an out.  You go the other way, you get a hit.

You pull a ball in the air, you get a hit.  You go the other way, you make an out.

This is not a hard and fast rule of course, but the bias is there.  Jeff Sullivan, working on a quote by Mike Fast, then shows this chart:

Pitcher Pull%
Pineda 21%
Lincecum 24%
Weaver 24%
Johnson 24%
Verlander 26%
2010 Strasburg 27%
Halladay 29%
Felix 30%
Haren 33%
Shields 35%
Beckett 35%
Cahill 35%

I don’t know if that’s all batted balls, or just the non-grounballs, or just the flyballs, etc.