POST # 2!

Ok, so posts here a few and far apart from being close together at this point. So I’m no David Pinto, whatever. There are a lot of not good reasons for that but I’m still getting used to the whole regular writing while doing everything else I do thing. Plus, I’m still not ecstatic about the way this site looks/I don’t know how to really generate traffic to a blog and I think these should be improved before I really invest a lot of time here. But right now I feel like filling up this blank space so…wtf

Now, the real object of this post was to look at the top ten in strikeouts from last year. Those are presented here along with their innings pitched and K/9 (thank you god – er- Baseball Reference (an honest mistake) for the data).

Pitcher	Total Ks	K/9	Innings	Games Started
Lincecum	265	10.51	227.0	33
Sabathia	251	8.93	253.0	35
Burnett	231	9.39	221.3	34
Santana (LAA)	214	8.79	219.0	34
Halladay	206	7.54	246.0	33
Haren	206	8.58	216.0	33
Santana (NYM)	206	7.92	234.3	34
Volquez	206	9.46	196.0	32
Billingsley	201	9.01	200.7	32
Vazquez	200	8.64	208.3	33

Caption Here: So what you may have noticed about this table, if you’re yet to get the gist of this site, is that it’s a pretty incomplete picture of the relative merit of these pitchers. Instead it looks only at strikeouts and things relevant total season strikeouts. That’s just what this site is: get over it. embrace it.

So there’s two ways to aim for the top as K-race defines it (most K’s per year): strike guys out when you them, or strike some guys out but face a whole lot of them. The supreme deity of this site is Nolan Ryan for setting the single season strikeout record at 383 in 1973. The Ryan express of ’73, as you might expect, excelled at both K/9 (1^st in ML at 10.57 ahead of Tom Seaver at 7.79) and innings pitched (326.0, 3^rd in ML behind Wilbur Wood and Gaylord Perry with 359.3 and 344.0 respectively). In 2008’s top ten class, the poles are Harry LeRoy Halladay who flung 246 innings at a mere 7.54/9 clip and Timéeee who blew’m away 10.51/9 and threw only- well yeah, …uh, he threw a ton of innings too. I think I’ll stick his photo up on this site to commemorate his 2008 feat.

Thinking about this a bit, I realize that K/9 and innings might not be the best angle. I know over at Baseball Analysts they’re in bed with K/ 100 pitches, bbbbuuuutttt that’s really more of a thing for how efficient, or how good, or how merry, or how something pitchers are other than how prone to rack up K’s they are.

OK, maybe I’ll give that idea some thought later, but right now I’m thinking strikeouts per batters faced. More simply, % of batters faced that a pitcher strikes out. That’s really as simple as it gets. It eliminates all the noise that is the fates of the batters that a pitcher doesn’t strike out.

Rank	Pitcher	Strikeout %	Rank	Pitcher	Strikeout %
1	Rich Harden	30.420168	61	Adam Wainwright	16.727941
2	Tim Lincecum	28.556034	62	Todd Wellemeyer	16.604709
3	Scott Kazmir	25.897036	63	Matt Garza	16.580311
4	Edinson Volquez	24.582339	64	Gavin Floyd	16.514806
5	CC Sabathia	24.535679	65	Jorge Campillo	16.335878
6	A.J. Burnett	24.137931	66	Carlos Zambrano	16.331658
7	Ervin Santana	23.857302	67	Kevin Millwood	16.297262
8	Josh Beckett	23.724138	68	Paul Maholm	16.295428
9	Jake Peavy	23.413258	69	Dana Eveland	16.010855
10	Chad Billingsley	23.399302	70	Jason Bergmann	15.635179
11	Dan Haren	23.38252	71	Tim Wakefield	15.517241
12	Jonathan Sanchez	22.589928	72	Cha Seung Baek	15.282392
13	Javier Vazquez	22.47191	73	Mark Buehrle	15.250545
14	Jorge De La Rosa	22.416813	74	Tim Redding	15.17067
15	Wandy Rodriguez	22.316865	75	Andy Sonnanstine	15.140415
16	Randy Johnson	22.236504	76	Jeremy Guthrie	15.075377
17	Ryan Dempster	21.845794	77	John Lannan	15.019255
18	Daisuke Matsuzaka	21.50838	78	Hiroki Kuroda	14.948454
19	Zack Greinke	21.504113	79	Tim Hudson	14.834206
20	Cole Hamels	21.444201	80	Jeff Francis	14.779874
21	Ricky Nolasco	21.428571	81	Barry Zito	14.669927
22	Ted Lilly	21.370499	82	Jamie Moyer	14.625446
23	Johan Santana	21.369295	83	Dave Bush	14.285714
24	Oliver Perez	21.251476	84	Nate Robertson	14.191853
25	Roy Halladay	20.871327	85	Kyle Lohse	14.183552
26	Gil Meche	20.654628	86	Brian Bannister	13.933416
27	Johnny Cueto	20.546164	87	Greg Smith	13.875
28	Felix Hernandez	20.42007	88	Mark Hendrickson	13.728814
29	Jered Weaver	20.402685	89	Edwin Jackson	13.636364
30	John Maine	20.065789	90	Jesse Litsch	13.469388
31	Scott Baker	20.056899	91	Garrett Olson	13.365539
32	Brett Myers	19.95104	92	Scott Olsen	13.216374
33	Matt Cain	19.935691	93	Miguel Batista	13.129496
34	Manny Parra	19.838057	94	Joe Blanton	12.982456
35	Ubaldo Jimenez	19.815668	95	Mike Pelfrey	12.925969
36	John Danks	19.776119	96	Jarrod Washburn	12.888889
37	Randy Wolf	19.684083	97	Braden Looper	12.826603
38	Shaun Marcum	19.52381	98	Joe Saunders	12.763321
39	Ben Sheets	19.458128	99	Luke Hochevar	12.720848
40	Brandon Webb	19.385593	100	Brian Moehler	12.615385
41	Aaron Harang	19.293821	101	Joel Pineiro	12.55814
42	John Lackey	19.259259	102	Jason Marquis	12.330623
43	Roy Oswalt	19.141531	103	Greg Maddux	12.189055
44	Cliff Lee	19.079686	104	Jeremy Sowers	12.007505
45	Kevin Slowey	18.836141	105	Nick Blackburn	11.664642
46	Bronson Arroyo	18.714122	106	Daniel Cabrera	11.571255
47	Justin Verlander	18.522727	107	Jeff Suppan	11.538462
48	Mike Mussina	18.315018	108	Scott Feldman	11.367127
49	James Shields	18.244014	109	Glen Perkins	11.195159
50	Andy Pettitte	17.934166	110	Aaron Cook	10.835214
51	Ian Snell	17.624021	111	Paul Byrd	10.775296
52	Jon Lester	17.391304	112	Brian Burres	10.57047
53	Derek Lowe	17.273796	113	Fausto Carmona	10.564663
54	Doug Davis	17.230769	114	Zach Duke	10.494572
55	Jair Jurrjens	17.097171	115	Kenny Rogers	10.485934
56	Justin Duchscherer	17.055655	116	Jon Garland	10.416667
57	Armando Galarraga	16.89008	117	Carlos Silva	10.014514
58	Brandon Backe	16.798942	118	Sidney Ponson	9.4771242
59	Vicente Padilla	16.77675	119	Kyle Kendrick	9.4182825
60	Odalis Perez	16.73699	120	Livan Hernandez	8.2614057

Title of Caption Now I know this chart is way too big to post but dam it I decided to post it any ways now get of my l back. Should I have shown the top 20 pitchers instead of top 120? Yes.

Ok, so what’s to be seen here is that Rich Harden is Bitchin’ and Livan Hernandez is a bitch: bitch. The Doctor was 5^th in overall K’s despite K’ing a mere 20.87%. Also, is Wandy Rodriguez is Jorge De La Rosa really that high? It is so.

All right, in the name of nerdiness I’ve made a graph. This is the percentage of batters a pitchers K’s in a game plotted versus the number of batters a pitcher usually faces in a game.

Mr. Kendrick, if you ever finish in the top then in strikeouts, I will marvel. (Isn’t that bold of me?) Note: The X-axis is Batters Faced per Game, not per Game Started, but all pitchers with five or more relief appearances were not listed – I don’t know where to find stats uniquely for started games. No. I’m too lazy to mine each players splits stats and subtract strikeout and batters faced stats from relief appearances. Sue me. I’ve passed the bar, I’ll win. (That is a lie).

Interesting is that the Kazmirs and Hardens didn’t face that many batters in the games they pitched. Thus while games were missed to injury, they also weren’t necessarily positioned to top the total K list despite high K%’s. And Wandy Warhol Rodriguez really doesn’t stick around games too long, does he?

If I was feeling industrious I’d make up some sort of “K factor” that would take into account this data and suggest the pitchers expected # of K’s given a full season. But, I’m not feeling industrious. I’ll work on that later.

So the whole point of this post was to set up future analysis of pitchers. As you can see there are two lines of focus. The K’s, and the batters faced. The K’s are much more under the control of the pitchers. Batters faced has to do with the quality, durability and efficiency of the pitcher and also managers, NL/AL, team offence(?) and some other stuff which pitchers cannot control. A final area of focus is probably injuries, which determines the number of times a pitcher is run out there, as well as possibly having an impact on the first two; ie, did Kazmir’s injury limit his ability to pitch deep in games, or strike people out?

Ok, this might be a bit dull for a post, but in future posts I’ll look at pitchers one at a time with a mind to their likely position on the 2009 strikeout leader board.

Disco.