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When trying to come up with inspiration for the first Doctoring the
Numbers
segment of the new season, there is no better place to be than
at the ballpark.

I discovered this when I took in a matinee at Comerica Park last Thursday on
a muggy Detroit afternoon. The Tigers had just deflated their crowd by
surrendering an eighth-inning game-tying home run to Rafael Palmeiro,
when Phil Garner called on Danny Patterson to relieve C.J.
Nitkowski
.

The scoreboard flashed Patterson’s numbers for the season, and I knew I had
found my first topic. Because you don’t see the following set of numbers
together very often:

ERA: 1.08     IP: 16.2    K: 3

Three strikeouts in 16 2/3 innings? That’s a positively Ballardesque ratio.
Actually, Jeff Ballard‘s career-worst ratio was 2.41 whiffs per nine
innings. Patterson’s ratio at the time was just 1.62.

Yet despite Patterson’s horrible strikeout rate, he has been one of the
finest set-up men in the game this year. Indeed, on this day he retired both
batters he faced and got the win when Tony Clark hit a bomb into the
right-field rafters in the bottom of the inning. Another 2 2/3 scoreless
innings Friday night gave him a sterling 0.90 ERA in 20 innings–with just
four strikeouts.

Is Patterson’s strikeout rate among the worst of all time? Not even close.
The high-offense era between the wars was predicated on contact hitting, and
strikeouts were considered such a sin that not a single batter struck out
even 100 times in any season between 1915 and 1932. In 1924, the American
League as a whole struck out just 2.67 men per nine innings. In 1927, a Red
Sox pitcher named Ted Wingfield struck out one batter in 74 2/3
innings. One. In 1919, Slim Sallee of the Cincinnati Reds struck out
24 batters in 227 2/3 innings (less than one per nine innings), and went
21-7 with a 2.06 ERA. Sallee, who walked 20 batters that year, is one of a
handful of pitchers to record more wins than walks in a season.

But in the modern era, where batters let it fly and are sensibly willing to
endure the occasional whiff in exchange for the occasional homer, Patterson’
s low strikeout total is very unusual. The lowest strikeout rates of the
expansion era, i.e., since 1961 (minimum: 50 innings):

Name            Year      IP    K    K/9     ERA

Jim Kaat 1981 53.0 8 1.36 3.40 Luis Aquino 1992 67.2 11 1.46 4.52 Nino Espinosa 1980 76.1 13 1.53 3.77 Hilly Hathaway 1993 57.1 11 1.73 5.02 Ken Holtzman 1977 71.2 14 1.76 5.78

Even if we lower the innings requirement to just 20, only 19 pitchers have
had a strikeout rate as low as Patterson’s 1.80 mark.

What makes Patterson’s performance so impressive is that despite his low
strikeout rate, his ERA is invisible to the naked eye. Of those 19 pitchers,
none of them had an ERA under 2.00, and only two of them had an ERA under
3.00.

The last pitcher to post an ERA under 2.00 with a strikeout rate of less
than 2.00 per nine innings was Ox Miller in 1945, who fashioned a
1.59 ERA for the St. Louis Browns despite whiffing just four batters in 28
1/3 innings. Since 1900, only five pitchers have thrown so much as 50
innings and joined the under 2.00/under 2.00 club:

Name            Year      IP    K    K/9     ERA

Ed Siever 1902 188.1 36 1.72 1.91 Eddie Plank 1917 131.0 26 1.79 1.79 Jack Taylor 1906 302.1 61 1.82 1.99 Jesse Barnes 1918 54.2 12 1.99 1.81 Fred Toney 1919 181.0 40 1.99 1.84

Most of the pitchers who manage a low ERA despite low strikeout totals do so
because of impeccable control that makes up for the high number of hits they
give up. The classic example is Dan Quisenberry, who saved 244 career
games and had a 2.76 lifetime ERA despite striking out just 3.27 men per
nine innings over the course of his career. Quisenberry actually gave up
more than a hit an inning during his career, but walked just 162 men in 1043
innings, a rate of 1.40 per nine. Babe Adams is the only pitcher
since 1900 with a lower career walk rate and even 100 career innings.

It gets better: 70 of Quiz’s walks were intentional; his unintentional walk
rate was just 0.79 per 9 innings! (For the record, from the time Dennis
Eckersley
joined the A’s in 1987 until he retired, he walked just 114
men in 789 2/3 innings, or 1.30 per nine. Twenty-six of them were
intentional, for a UIBB rate of exactly 1.00.)

Getting back to Patterson… while he’s possessed excellent control so
far–just four walks allowed–has also been stingy with the base hit,
allowing just 13 in 20 innings. That, along with an amazing six double-play
balls in just 20 innings, is the reason why he has been one of the best
relievers in baseball this season, according to
Michael Wolverton’s RRE
report
. Patterson’s combined total of just 17 strikeouts + hits in 20
innings, a ratio of 7.65, is on pace to be the lowest of all time. Since
1900, only eight pitchers (min: 50 IP) have had a combined total of less
than one strikeout or hit per inning:

Name            Year      IP    H    K  H+K/G    ERA  Next ERA

Cliff Curtis 1909 83 53 22 8.13 1.41 3.55 Johnny Murphy 1947 54.2 41 9 8.23 2.80 Retired Red Ruffing 1946 61 37 19 8.26 1.77 6.11 Hank Thormahlen 1918 112.2 85 22 8.55 2.48 2.62 Bob Hooper 1953 69.1 50 16 8.57 4.02 4.93 Jesse Stovall 1903 57 44 12 8.84 2.05 4.42 Jerry Bell 1972 70.2 50 20 8.92 1.66 3.97 Babe Ruth 1918 166.1 125 40 8.93 2.22 2.97

As a group, these pitchers were exceedingly effective, which isn’t
surprising given that none of them allowed more than seven hits per nine
innings. Also not surprisingly, their effectiveness was as fleeting as Lou
Bega’s career. Only one of these pitchers didn’t see his ERA rise at least
50 points the following season, and Hank Thormahlen‘s ERA the year
after that was 4.14. Despite the fact that several of these pitchers were
rookies, not one of them was still pitching in the majors five years later.
(One of them was able to find work elsewhere on the field, however.)

Patterson, in all honesty, is unlikely to maintain his low strikeout rate
all season. Patterson struck out 69 batters in 71 innings as a rookie in
1997, and while his strikeouts have steadily dropped since, he had never
struck out fewer than one batter every two innings before this year.

The Tigers better hope his strikeout rate recovers soon. If history is any
guide, either his strikeouts will start rising or his ERA will–with a
vengeance.

Rany Jazayerli is an author of Baseball Prospectus. You can contact him by clicking here.

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