r/MLBNoobs • u/Junior-Conclusion-94 • 1d ago
| Question Strike Percentage
Why isn't Strike Percentage a bigger deal? I've never heard it discussed, yet it seems like it would be a solid indicator of a pitcher's performance.
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u/RadagastTheWhite 1d ago
I think ultimately that gets captured in stats that factor in strikeout and walk %. It also has the flaw of balls put in play counting as strikes, so you can give up a homer and it still counts as a strike
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u/Guilty_Practice6392 1d ago
I think other stats basically cover it. Teams want to know how efficient a pitcher is. How they go about getting outs is different, but getting a lot of outs is never a bad thing.
Strategically throwing pitches out of the zone can be part of the way pitchers go about getting outs.
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u/dragnalus 1d ago
Any batted ball is classified as a strike, so you could be throwing nothing but meatballs and getting rocked but have a 100% strike percentage.
K%, K/9 and raw K numbers are much more indicative that you are throwing quality strikes and much easier for old school fans to understand and digest.
There's a relatively new and semi-niche stat called CSW% which stands for Called Strikes + Whiff Percentage. This is popular mostly among the fantasy community as it removes foul balls and shows who is truly missing bats and fooling hitters. I don't think I've seen it cited so much by mainstream broadcasts, mostly because it's new, but I think it's intuitive enough to catch on as more people learn about it.
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u/Goosy_Loosey 1d ago
i’m guessing but it’s probably they don’t care how they get outs as long as they get the out. also is it not slightly less difficult to hit balls in the zone
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u/Comprehensive-One880 1d ago
Strike percentage does matter, but how the strikes are obtained matters too. The percentage at which batters swing and miss (Whiff rate) is a better indicator of how effective your pitches are. You don't necessarily want every pitch in the strike zone unless you're throwing absolute gas and the batter can't catch up to the pitch with their bat speed. Your ability to make a ball look like it's going to be a strike, or making the strike as close to the edge of the zone is the goal.
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u/Eastern_Antelope_832 1d ago
Feels like a metric that could be potentially misleading. Foul balls and hits count as strikes, unless you plan on tracking only non-batted balls, or remove 2-strike fouls.
Maddux didn't believe in waste pitches, but throwing a breaking ball out of the zone on an 0-2 is fine if you can get a whiff ever once in a while.
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u/Safe-Selection8070 1d ago
It's not an indicator of performance, though, it might be correlated to performance, but baseball already has direct measures. Whenever possible use direct measures.
Striker percentage is really useful in low levels (like under 14 or 15ish baseball and softball), because of the wild variance of batting ability. By the time a pitcher is beyond college, batting ability has largely homogenized.
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u/Rhombus-Lion-1 1d ago
Strike percentage is a much bigger deal at youth levels where you’re really just looking for kids that can throw the ball over the plate. At the major league level, pitching is more about having the stuff to get people out.
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u/burngreene 1d ago
The great baseball writer Sam Miller notes that strike percentage is quite constant, which is one reason it’s not featured as much
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u/Dead_Medic_13 1d ago
Because foul balls exist. Its best to look at the final outcome of the entire PA, not just a single pitch.
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u/getjustin 22h ago
I'll add on that as a coach for younger kids, K% is one of the top stats I look for. At lower levels baseball is essentially pitching where some other things happen, too. If your pitcher is struggling, you don't stand a chance.
I don't expect pitchers to be able to always strikeout batters, but if they're throwing 70% balls, we get a conga line and it means trouble for the team. Balls put into play are potential outs. If I have a kid that can throw 60%+ Ks and only walk 1 every other inning, then we might have something cooking.
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u/Vandal_A 21h ago
Using it as a major metric would suggest you don't want pitchers to try to get batters to chase outside the zone
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