Blog for Paul

So my good friend Paul mentioned "I think the biggest key to a win is pitching to contact. Maddox and Smoltz are two easy examples. Ground balls kept in the infield win games for pitchers. Do they track that stat? Don't rip me ...for my examples please, it's late." and to this I ask, Does pitching to contact win games?


Now before we get started Paul brought up two hall of fame pitchers.  I would like to think of these guys as two outliers.  My brain's first thought is if we pitch to contact then the hitter has a better chance of getting on base, which leads to a better chance of him getting to home.  Here is what we must decide before we did in to this thought.  

What stat declares a pitcher to be a good pitcher?  I am going to use ERA (Earned Run Average).  Its such a basic stat, and that is why I love it.  A low ERA means less players cross the plate which gives your team a better chance of winning.


What stat/stats would tell us he is a contact pitcher?  This is where it got interesting.  Of course if he had a large BAA (batting average against) it would mean he would be a high contact hitter, but what if those hits where outs as in the scenario we are describing.  So I thought if the pitcher had a low ERA plus a low K rate (strikeout for the extremely baseball stat illiterate) and a pretty low or even kind of low BAA then it must mean he was a contact pitcher.  I am not defining low or high yet, this is just me thinking, sort of like those dream sequences in late 80's/early 90's sitcoms.  


So I decided to look at last years pitchers in the MLB and see who meets this description.   First I started with the top 50 pitchers with the lowest ERA because that is how I am defining a pitcher being good or bad.  (Yes you could use some nerdier stat I know, but again I like ERA because its easy)  I sorted those 50 players based on K's per inning.  One pitcher stood out from the rest last year.  He was the only pitcher with an ERA under 3.0 with a K per inning under .60 and thats R.A. Dickey for the Mets.  There were others that I would stick in the same category, mainly Trevor Cahill in Oakland, Tim Hudson with Atlanta and Clay Buchholz with Boston.  But the difference between those players and Dickey was that Dickey had the highest Hits per Inning rate out of the bunch. What saved him was his BBIP (Base on ball per inning pitch).  Out of the top 50 ERA pitchers he ranked number 9 in this category and on top of that he is the only one out of that group even in the top 28 in BBIP.   So he is extremely accurate and because of this it is compensating for his high contact rate. The crappy part is that it did not convert to Wins and Losses which is  probably why he isn't considered and elite pitcher.  He had 11 wins and 9 losses on the season.  He also didn't play as many games as the other top pitchers (27 compared to the low to mid 30's for the other players) which is why his stats may be skewed a little.  With less games it means that a few good games can skew your average down on most of these stats I mentioned.  


I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this guy and see what happens throughout the rest of his career.  He has been in up and down with the bigs since 2001 but last year was easily the best year he has had so far.  So much so the Mets gave him a pretty heafty contract.  For them I hope last year was a fluke but for Mr. Dickey I hope it was the start to many great seasons to come.