I’d like to think that I’ve become a more “enlightened” baseball watcher over my years as a writer. I’d like to think that I understand the game’s nuances and know how to look for what really matters instead of getting distracted by the superficial, and that I know how to focus on the big picture rather than getting swamped by small-sample noise. But for all that fancy schmancy talk, one thing gets my blood boiling as much as it used to: uncompetitive pitches in hitters’ counts.
I’m pretty sure you can picture it. There’s a runner on first in a close game, and a 2-0 count with a slugger at the plate. Your team’s high-octane reliever peers in for the sign – a fastball. He takes one or two deep breaths, maybe flutters his glove a few times to calm the nerves, then winds and delivers. A foot outside, ball three. Even Javy Báez wouldn’t swing at that thing. Ugh, this inning is already spiraling away. There might not be a more maddening experience in all of baseball. Come on! Buddy! Just throw a strike! How hard can it be? You know the hitter isn’t going to swing if you can’t at least get the ball near the plate.
A lot of the time, baseball is a game of inches, with fine margins separating success from failure, but not when a pitcher misses by a ton in a count where they should have been trying to throw a strike. This happens a lot, and not just to your favorite team, despite what the eye test would tell you. All told, nearly a quarter of pitches thrown with hitters ahead in the count miss the plate by a wide margin. If you define “a wide margin” as pitches that end up in the chase or waste zones as defined by Baseball Savant, you can make some categorical statements about these pitches, such as:
- Batters swing only around 17% of the time at them, a minuscule chase rate, or
- In terms of run value, a pitch like this is worse than leaving a fastball over the heart of the plate against Aaron Judge.
As you can probably imagine, the players who do this most frequently are relievers. A reliever who can’t find the zone is “effectively wild.” A starter who bounces pitches like this will probably end up in the bullpen anyway. Reed Garrett throws the highest rate of uncompetitive pitches when behind in the count, at 36.1%. As someone who has watched a lot of Garrett this year, that sounds exceedingly reasonable. Behind him, we’ve got Andrew Chafin, Elvis Peguero, Andrés Muñoz, Aroldis Chapman, Austin Adams; the top of this list is exactly what you’d expect it to be.
As you can see, a high rate of wasted pitches doesn’t mean that a pitcher is bad. Plenty of effective relievers are featured at the top of the list. Heck, Garrett has been solid this year, albeit in a streaky way. The trick is to have such overpowering stuff that you can afford a few wasted chances. If you throw a 100-mph fastball that batters frequently miss even when it’s in the strike zone, it’s a lot easier to climb back into counts after falling way behind. However, baseball might be a better viewing experience if that weren’t the case, quite frankly. The cost of those wasted pitches just isn’t sufficient to prevent teams from stocking their bullpens with live arms regardless of command. But there’s another way to succeed. You could take the complete opposite tack and miss as infrequently as possible.
Miles Mikolas is an example of this strategy: Only 13.4% of his pitches when he’s behind in the count miss badly, the lowest mark in baseball and roughly a third of Garrett’s rate. The plan of overwhelming the strike zone to avoid falling further behind in the count is mostly a starter’s tactic. It fits the skillset better; starters generally have more command in the first place, and they’re also generally interested in keeping pitch counts low. George Kirby, Zach Eflin, Bryan Woo,…
Remaining text has been omitted for brevity.
