Transaction Analysis: ... (05/19)
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May 19, 2004 Lies, Damned LiesGroundballs in the MixRoy Halladay. Carlos Zambrano. Derek Lowe. Greg Maddux. Some pitchers' most readily-identifiable characteristic is their ability to induce groundballs. Indeed, for pitchers like Lowe, Zambrano, and Brandon Webb, inducing groundballs is an essential part of their game plan. Zambrano, for instance, can get away with maintaining a relatively high walk rate because he induces a lot of double plays, and avoids giving up home runs, which are especially costly with runners on base. As I discussed in the PECOTA essay in this year's book, groundball induction--or, more specifically, groundball-to-flyball ratio--is remarkably consistent from year-to-year, more so than virtually any other measure of pitching performance. Here is a plot containing the groundball percentages of all major league pitchers who faced at least 200 batters in each season 2002 and 2003:
Look at how nicely the points form a line--the correlation described in the chart is .75, remarkably high as far as baseball statistics go. Compare that to what we get, using the same group of pitchers, for a more commonly-used metric like walk rate (measured as walks as a percentage of batters faced):
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