Potential Starting Pitcher Strikeout Rate Decliners
Yesterday, I unveiled the xK% regression equation 2.0 and used it to discuss pitchers who may enjoy a strikeout rate surge in the near future. Today I am looking into the opposite group — those whose xK% suggest a decline in strikeout rate may be imminent. Similar to the surgers, I am only going to list those pitchers with actual K% marks of at least 20%. If he’s only posting a 15% mark to begin with, but should really be at 10%, do we really care?
Name | K% | xK% | Diff |
---|---|---|---|
Tyler Chatwood | 22.5% | 14.0% | 8.5% |
Yu Darvish | 27.1% | 21.0% | 6.1% |
Johnny Cueto | 30.7% | 25.4% | 5.3% |
Masahiro Tanaka | 33.7% | 28.8% | 4.9% |
Jon Lester | 25.7% | 21.0% | 4.7% |
James Paxton | 30.2% | 25.9% | 4.3% |
Adam Wainwright | 28.1% | 24.0% | 4.1% |
Max Scherzer | 33.0% | 29.0% | 4.0% |
This list is filled with good pitchers off to great starts and it’s fairly obvious that the majority weren’t going to maintain their inflated strikeout percentages even without this equation telling us this.
Tyler Chatwood is intriguing in that he’s an extreme ground ball pitcher and flashes plus velocity with his fastball. Unfortunately, he throws the fastball far too often to induce lots of swings and misses and his primary secondary pitch, the slider, was barely above average in terms of SwStk% last year. Of course, calling Coors Field home also limits his upside. His xK% is almost identical to where he sat the last two seasons, so this is the same Chatwood we’ve seen.
Wow. Since I merged data from both here and Baseball-Reference using the VLOOKUP function, I literally had to go back and check Yu Darvish’s B-R.com page to ensure I didn’t make a mistake. Turns out, there were no data problems and his S/Str percentage is actually down significantly. Both his cutter and slider have induced fewer swings and misses, plus he’s suddenly turned into an extreme fly ball pitcher. His velocity is fine and he’s throwing more strikes than ever before, so his problems missing bats and killing worms is curious. Given his sub-1.00 ERA and WHIP, you could obviously sell him for as high as can be if you so desire.
Obviously, no one expects Johnny Cueto to maintain a 30%+ K%. But, even his xK% would easily be a new career high. His fastball velocity has jumped over his past two seasons and he’s getting significantly more called strikes than he ever has in the past. That’s what’s primarily driving the xK% surge, so one wonders how sustainable the increase is given his history. Combined with his strong ground ball rate and excellent control, he’s not necessarily a sell-high candidate. Though the injury history is something to consider.
Masahiro Tanaka is currently fourth among all starting pitchers in S/Str rate. Yeah, that splitter is pretty good. I’m still wondering how he managed such pedestrian recent strikeout rates in Japan with such an excellent swing and miss offering.
It’s too bad that James Paxton suffered a lat injury that sent him to the DL as he was showing everyone exactly why I like him so very much. He only made two starts, but if he qualified, he would rank sixth in S/Str rate among all starters. Combine that with an extreme ground ball tendency and passable control, and you have the recipe for a major breakout. Get well soon!
Mike Podhorzer is the 2015 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Baseball Writer of the Year and three-time Tout Wars champion. He is the author of the eBook Projecting X 2.0: How to Forecast Baseball Player Performance, which teaches you how to project players yourself. Follow Mike on X@MikePodhorzer and contact him via email.
Maybe in the case of Tanaka, teams are still adjusting to him since he has made only 3 starts, and thus swinging and missing more at unfamiliar pitches from an unfamiliar delivery, where in Japan they had ~6 years of experience to draw on.
About Tanaka- What is the league average K% in Japan as opposed to here? Maybe they just have way fewer swinging strikes in general due to an increased emphasis on contact? This in addition to the above point regarding only pitching 3 games would seem to make sense.
I meant league average K% for hitters in case it wasnt clear.
Pretty confident they strike out less in Japan. There was an article in the preseason comparing all Japanese pitchers and their indexed strikeout rates I believe, so if you do a search, you should be able to find it.
Well sure, but the majority of other Japanese pitchers (with the exception of Darvish) have had similar strikeout rates.
Hideo Nomo rookie of the year never forget
He also pitched more to contact in Japan as he had less issues with power hitters. In the MLB, with guys on he’ll fall back on his swing and miss stuff which he always had. He could always K guys but he is a smart pitcher, and as Roy Halliday used to say ‘I way prefer a GB out on 1 pitch than a K, my job is to get guys out.’
That’s a bunch of hooey. What evidence do you have that suggests Tanaka wanted batters to make contact in Japan more so than in the States now?
And your choice isn’t a strikeout or a ground ball out. It’s a strikeout, which is an automatic out, or a ball in play, which goes for a hit 30% of the time, and also goes for a home run 3.5%-4% of the time. There’s a reason the best pitchers just so happen to also all have some of the best strikeout rates in baseball. It’s because that’s the most desired result.
http://riveraveblues.com/2014/02/masahiro-tanaka-potential-increased-strikeout-rate-99359/
“According to Law, Tanaka essentially started pitching to contact these last few years. The hitters in Japan are not all that great, and it seems like he realized he didn’t need to nibble on the edges to succeed, he could simply pound the zone. That approach won’t work in MLB, or at least it won’t work as well. Tanaka will have to go back to living on the corners, and by all indications, he can do that.”
Throwing strikes and pounding the zone doesn’t equal pitching to contact. When you’re stuff sucks, you’re essentially pitching to contact. Not by choice, it’s because you can’t make batters swing and miss.
guys, guys. Calm down. What we need to learn from this, is that Roy Halladay was pretty good.