John Lackey, yesterday’s mystery pitcher, was the subject of many interesting conversations in my inbox. Most of these were from people who have not yet joined the Firefox Squad and had trouble identifying the pitcher in their browser. But I also got an e-mail from a die-hard Angels fan who complained that, while he was pleased to have Lackey on his team, the pitcher has a stress-inducing habit of turning 0-2 counts into nightmares, trying too hard to go for the strikeout instead of simply retiring the batter.
It turns out that, over the past three seasons, Lackey has wound up walking the batter 4.7% of the time that the at-bat starts out with an 0-2 count. That struck me as a high percentage — there are a number of hitters I could name that don’t walk 4.7% of the time on a 0-0 count — and in fact it is. I took a sample of 25 arbitrarily-selected starting pitchers, and looked at how they performed in this department. As you can see, only two of these pitchers walked the hitter more often than Lackey.
Percentage of BB following 0-2 count, 2004-2006
Chien-Ming Wang 5.2%
Mark Redman 4.9%
John Lackey 4.7%
Daniel Cabrera 4.4%
Woody Williams 4.4%
Kenny Rogers 4.3%
Eric Milton 3.6%
Matt Clement 3.5%
Bronson Arroyo 3.4%
A.J. Burnett 3.4%
Josh Beckett 3.3%
Jake Westbrook 3.0%
Barry Zito 2.7%
Doug Davis 2.7%
Carlos Zambrano 2.5%
Dan Haren 2.4%
Jake Peavy 2.3%
Tim Wakefield 2.0%
Johan Santana 1.8%
Jon Garland 1.8%
Mike Mussina 1.5%
Mark Buehrle 1.4%
Jamie Moyer 1.2%
Greg Maddux 1.1%
Curt Schilling 0.9%
Score one for our Angels fan; there are certain things that you notice watching a team 100 or 120 times a season that an analyst equipped with the full text of the Library of Congress and a supercomputer would never pick up. This is an interesting list, in that giving up walks on an 0-2 count has relatively little to do with a pitcher’s overall command. Control pitchers like Woody Williams and Kenny Rogers walk the batter relatively often in this situation — perhaps because they lack an out pitch — while wilder pitchers like Doug Davis and Carlos Zambrano do fine. It’s also interesting to see Chien-Ming Wang’s name atop the list, since he’s an unusual pitcher in so many ways.
But is walking the hitter following an 0-2 count a bad thing? That seems like a rhetorical question but it isn’t. Walking the batter is a poor outcome, but that doesn’t mean you should simply groove the ball down the middle; the optimal strategy is far from obvious.
Lackey’s OPS allowed following 0-2 counts if .405, which is a low number; the average for pitchers in this sample is .465. Wang, at the top of the chart, gives up a .571 OPS in these situations, but Jon Garland, who is toward the bottom, has almost the same number (.569).
It turns out that there is a correlation between walk rate on an 0-2 count and OPS allowed, but it’s quite weak (.26). There’s more than one way to skin a cat, or retire a batter who is in trouble. Lackey’s hyperaggressive strategy when ahead in the count might be frustrating to his fans and his managers, but there’s no evidence that it’s poor pitching.
John Lackey, yesterday’s 
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