The pitch to contact philosophy sounds great in theory, but in reality what ends up happening is you get the Minnesota Twins pitching staff. They had the lowest K rate in the majors last season (5.90), and not surprisingly one of the worst ERAs in the league.

The bottom line is that pitchers who get an above average number of K’s prevent runs better than those who pitch to contact.

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/02/categorizing_pi_4.php

Pitchers with above average K rates in 2008 had a 3.84 ERA while pitchers with below average K rates had a 4.73 ERA. The below average K rates would be your pitch to contact guys. Also from that study we can see the most successful pitcher has a high K rate, low walk rate, and high GB rate – the ERA of 3.32 was the lowest possible ERA of all the different combinations. Your pitch to contact types did significantly worse for instance, as those with below average K rates and above average walk/GB rates had a 4.28 ERA – nearly 1 run higher on average. Even the pitch to contact types that had good walk rates and were flyball pitchers had a 4.66 ERA – showing once again that below average strikeout rates and failing to keep the fall on the ground hurts a pitcher in the long run.

If you think that was a fluke, then feel free to look at this site – http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2010/03/categorizing_st.php.

Here, they looked at pitchers from 07-09 and found that the most successful pitchers, once again, had high strike out rates, good control, and high GB%. The pitch to contact guys, or low K rate pitchers, were the ones who struggled.

It’s easy to say a pitcher’s job is simply to get outs. But what’s important is how the pitcher gets their outs. And if they have above average strikeout rates, and avoid pitching to contact, they’ll be more successful in the long run.

I’m sure you can give me examples of how with guys on pitching to contact is important because you can get a double play. I wouldn’t disagree there. But the majority of the time you want your pitchers to get their outs via the K, because that’s the best way for a pitcher to prevent runs from crossing the plate.

In 2007, Joey Votto hit 4 homers. How many of them did you see?

What is essential is that on strike one, a pitcher must make a quality pitch, but not being the aim of a pitch that cannot be hit. Almost never is a pitcher good enough to throw three pitches to a hitter that he will swing and miss, with the obvious exceptions, and assuming the hitter is at least mediocre.

Hitters who fall behind in the count have their respective averages drop 100 points. That is a huge deal, arguably the most important one of all statistics. Ideally, that first quality pitch will result in a hitter getting himself out, bad hitters do this consistently, good hitters do not. (ex.)
Albert Pujols almost never swings at the first pitch recognizing the futility of doing so.

If a pitcher gains the strike one advantage, then he can become more precise. And precision pitches do indeed result in more swing-and-misses but it is still not the goal, the goal is to make a pitch that is even less likely to be hit well, but either is a strike, or close enough for the hitter to believe it is, not wanting to fall behind 2 strikes creating a situation where he is even less likely to hit the ball solidly.

And when a pitcher gets a two-strike advantage, he is blessed with the option of making pitches, that are even less likely to be hit, often resulting in a strikeout. Here even pitch to contact guys get the KOs.

So while the argument may appear to be merely one of semantics, it isn’t really. It is a thought process, one that is hard to learn, but essential to succeed.

There are only a handful of pitchers who get the best results via strikeouts, and they are the ones with the great power stuff. Unfortunately, the less talented strive to pitch like the elite, and suffer because of that desire. The best strategy is to make quality pitches, especially on strike one, and let the chips fall where they may. This really is the pitch to contact philosophy. Of course strikeouts carry a higher percentage of outs, Duh. But it shouldn’t be a goal, just a comfortable result of excellent pitches.

It’s a bad article based on zero data, especially when multiple examples disproving his “theory” are brought up.

The reason why James comes to an unorthodox conclusion is because he defined “groundball pitcher” in an unorthodox way. Most of us think of a groundball pitcher as someone with a high percentage of groundballs divided by balls in play excluding bunts. James defines a groundball pitcher as someone with a high percentage of groundball outs divided by total outs.

Well, duh. That’s going to lead to different conclusions. Take someone like a young Felix Hernandez. Under the common defintion of a groundball pitcher, Felix was an extreme groundballer but under James’ definition Felix recorded so many strikeouts that he would not be an extreme groundout generator. Strikeouts are so important to a pitcher’s success that someone who James considers to be an extreme groundball pitcher tends to have few strikeouts, which of course leads to a subpar career.

James’ research in this article was not illuniminating. He still has unique insights often, but he tends to spend fairly little time reading others’ research so he can be very idiosyncratic.

1 Tim Hudson–TJ before this period
2 Justin Masterson–Nope
3 Derek Lowe–Nada
4 Jake Westbrook–TJ before this period
5 Trevor Cahill–Nothin’
6 Jaime Garcia–Labrum and Partial Rotator Cuff Tear, previous TJ
7 Roberto Hernandez–لا
8 Ricky Romero–לֹא
9 R.A. Dickey–Are you kidding? It’s R.A. fucking DIckey.
10 Felix Hernandez–Nope
11 Francisco Liriano–previous TJ
12 Jon Lester–I doubt ground balls give you lymphoma
13 Jon Garland–2011, Debridement Labrum & Bursa & Rotator Cuff
14 Adam Wainwright–Yikes
15 Carl Pavano–Nope
16 Roy Halladay–Well, I guess we’ll see? But no
17 Hiroki Kuroda–Nope
18 Chris Carpenter–Thoracic Outlet Syndrome. Also, kicked in a brawl?
19 Paul Maholm–mild shoulder strain in 2011
20 Clay Buchholz–Stress Fracture in 2011
21 CC Sabathia-nein
22 Rick Porcello-nada
23 Gavin Floyd-nothing of note
24 Chad Billingsley–Partial UCL Ligament Tear and Flexor Tendon in 2012
25 Edwin Jackson–is getting traded a lot an injury?

You’d obviously have to compare that, and get a much bigger sample, but pitchers get injured. And there’s no common injury there other than TJ, but really, who doesn’t get TJ these days?

I think James is wrong that groundball pitchers are overrated. Obviously a guy who has a high strikeout rate is better than someone with just a high GB rate, but that doesn’t make a GB pitcher overrated. We know for a fact that pitchers who get groundballs are on average more successful than their flyball counterparts. The Baseball Analysts studied it for several years, and every year the GB pitcher had a better ERA than a flyball guy (everything else being equal) –> http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2009/02/post_6.php.

I’m too tired to look, but they have studies for 2009 and include walk rates in addition to K’s and GB, but the bottom line is that groundball pitchers are more successful than flyball guys with everything else being equal. Of course an elite strikeout pitcher like Verlander is more valuable, but that has more to do with strikeouts being so important and not because of the lack of ground balls.

Of course power guys, Gibson, Koufax, Seaver etc are preferable, but they are rare. Pitch to contact isn’t ideal, just practical. If you flounder trying to be Gibson, then try something else, and for some guys, like Kyle Lohse, yes I am still flogging that long deceased equine, have found another method that can be successful.

James’ mistake, is forced categorization, thus labels.