and play-by-play data provided by Sports Info Solutions. Its great to set goals, but keep in mind that a strike percentage of 65% is above average. Looking for high school, college guidance. F-Strike% (First Pitch Strike Percentage): Percentage of PA that begin with a strike. Links and Resources: by . The chart includes two dashed orange lines. Contact% = Number of pitches on which contact was made / Swings. Personally, Ive always tracked balls, BIPs, and other strikes. Now my son cant hit location all that well, but he was trying, and that tells me he was thinking. The league-average O-Swing% is about 30%; the player with the lowest O-Swing% in 2017 was (no surprise at all) walk machine Joey Votto, at 15.8%. In baseball, FPS stands for first pitch strike. To others it might mean putting the bat on a pitch solidly. (If we're just looking at any first pitch, only three players with at least 100 plate appearances have been more aggressive on the first pitch.) An 0-2 ball three inches down and away is be a great pitch. I know that doesnt compliment the umpire crowd, but these people are not professionals, nor do they enjoy the best mix of those who understand what a strike zone is. F-Strike% (aka First-Pitch Strike Rate; percentage of strikes a batter gets on his first pitch, per plate appearance) SwStr% (aka Swinging Strike Rate; percentage of swings that do not result in contact) Go ahead and pull up any player page on Fangraphs and follow along with this, if you wish. document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a040f21a28be100c23af6645282a1f17" );document.getElementById("fe53143262").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Originally posted by BatSpinner View Post. Calculation: There is a lot of emphasis put on the power of the "first pitch strike." Harvey's walk rate is down to 2.2 per nine, and he entered Wednesday ranking 18th in the Majors with 66.9-percent first-pitch strikes, according to FanGraphs. The numbers are from this seasons HS team. As a team, the Twins havent ranked outside the top five in fewest walks allowed since 1996, and theyve been first or second in that category in nine of the past 13 seasons. The 50th percentile data means that 50% of pitchers will have control rates below the value listed, and 50% of pitchers will have control rates above the value listed. He took the second pitch, too, as Kyle Freeland struggled with his command. I guess what I meant is he gives up very few fly balls and very few hits. In fact, our initial research on stats and skills by starting pitcher ball-strike counts confirms the significant positive impact on a pitcher that starts the count 0-1. Thanks both of you guys for great feedback. Unlike pitches outside the zone that typically result in weak contact, swinging at pitches inside the zone leads to better contact. The way I look at it is, if he threw 5 less balls in that stretch, he probably would have retired the same 12 batters with something like 15 less pitches since not only would those balls be strikes or batted balls, he would probably have faced one or two less batters overall. Swinging Strike Rate coincides heavily with Contact%, so when you see a high Swinging Strike rate, you can generally expect a low Contact% and therefore a lower batting average. Pitchers: A higher F-Strike% is preferable for pitchers. Its not that those numbers wouldnt have any validity at the lower levels, but there were few willing to go through the drudgery of compiling and presenting them. 2023 Fantasy Baseball: Is the Second Round Too Early for Witt, deGrom, and Cease? 42% of starting pitchers tended to approach their three-year FpK% more than their prior seasons FpK% or career FpK%. Divide that number by the total pitches, multiply it by 100 and subtract it from 100%, and you have strike percentage. Jimster, thanks for the umps perspective. Given the numbers weve seen from him so far, why would you ever throw him a strike? And don't throw strikes unless you have to. IMHO, invalid numbers are worse than no numbers. You must log in or register to reply here. And according to Craig Burley's 2004 study in The Hardball Times, throwing a strike on a 0-0 count could potentially save over 12,000 runs scored in a single Major League Baseball season.[1]. Gallo doesnt care about average; he just wants to hit dingers. Using the formula our regression spits out for using Whiff/Swing to predict K%, we can develop an "Expected K%" in very rough terms that is K%=.007502+ (.85006*Whiff%). The second one, the otherwise perfectly average one who always throws a ball on pitch one, has an expected ERA of about 5.50. Nevertheless, they all do the best job they can, and most are pretty reliable. sage steele husband jonathan bailey ng nhp/ ng k . Someone told me that girls needed at least a 70-75% strike percentage in order to play at a high level (high level being Varsity or A ball). Plate discipline is important because it can help you discern whether or not a players surface stats are legitimate. And yes, if the next ump has a tighter strike zone, that ratio of balls-to-pitches is going to go up but well have to discuss it and account for it. His percentage of 64.3 through Aug. 11, 2010 is the highest of his career, and the eighth best in the American League. PT TOMORROW: AL Central - Could Csar Hernndez get another shot in Detroit? santa clara county environmental health permit application / low income housing fairborn, ohio / low income housing fairborn, ohio Less than 8 percent of first-pitch strikes turn into base hits. Talking percentages and stats to a youngster kind-a goes in one ear and out the other. Numbers dont lie. These are the pitches you can drive, and if youre missing on a lot of pitches in the zone (which should be the easiest pitches to hit), youre going to struggle to hit for average. If you want success on the mound: Where would you like us to send your checklist? According to FanGraphs.com, as of Aug. 11, 2010, the three starting pitchers with the highest first-pitch strike percentages were Cliff Lee (70.8 percent), Carl Pavano (68 percent), and Roy Halladay (67.6 percent). There is very little variation in the major league average from year to year. So we set a goal to improve that ball-to-pitch ratio from 41% down to 35%. The more things you track, called, fouled, missed, tipped, and BIP strikes, along with balls, the more things you can tell. If I did, there would be 100 walks a games and the games would never get out of the first inning. by Handedness, Hardball Times: The Importance Of Strike One (Part One), Hardball Times: The Importance Of Strike One (Part Two). No biggee! And heres something else to consider. For example, a pitcher with a FpK% of 60% (average level for a starting pitcher) is expected to have a 2.9 Ctl. If a batter has been at bat 127 times and in that time has made: 32 hits, 7 walks, been hit by a pitch 2 times, and 3 sacrifice flies, then: 32 hits + 7 walks + 2 hit by a pitch = 41. With all the new scoring apps out there, more and more people are getting exposed to things which have in the past been reserved for the very highest levels of the game. I am a very experienced data analyst, but I have no prior experience in this area so Im learning as I go. Whiff rate is just another way of saying swinging strike rate, or the percentage of swings that dont result in contact. Zone% tells us how many of a hitters pitches are in the strike zone. Heres how Im looking at it. In this edition, we round out hitters by taking a look at their plate discipline. 500 pitchers (of the 666 total MLB pitchers) threw strikes at least 60% of the time. This number can feed into your walk rate quite a bit. The one for our team shows individuals, but the next page shows teams, and that can be very illuminating. This number tells you a lot about whether a batter has an aggressive approach at the plate, or whether he is more patient and sees a lot of pitches. Once you have this %, and it seems to be what youre looking for as a calculation metod with all the right components - what do you plan to do with it? From Little League on, young pitchers are encouraged to "get ahead." FPS: First pitch strikes; FPS%: First pitch strike percentage; FPSO%: % of FPS at-bats that result in an out; FPSW%: % of FPS at-bats that result in a walk; FPSH%: % of FPS at-bats that result in a hit 3: At bat with 3-or-fewer pitches 3: At bat with 3-or-fewer pitches I think F-Strike% has much value, but it just feels like there needs to be more info to really utilize it. how to calculate first pitch strike percentagemcarthur golf club milk jug logomcarthur golf club milk jug logo Yet again, youre going to get mixed signals from time to time. The weakness there for the moment is he hasnt given up any runs, but if things broke just a little differently, he would have. For the purpose of pitch counts and strike percentage we count a strike as a strike whether it is a foul ball with two strikes, a swing at a pitch at eye level, curveball in the dirt or just a bad call by the ump. Everything I might want to track can be derived from that data. From SeattlePI.com, "It puts him in the drivers' seat to execute pitch sequences to hitters on his own accord, rather than having to give in and offer hitters fastballs in fastball-counts."[6]. 4. AcceptPreferences, Published on June 25, 2018 by Jacob Adkins. When the hitter has a count in his favor, those numbers skyrocket to .350 BA and a .407 slugging percentage. So I can count the balls pitched, but I cant see how many pitches (including fouls) a particular at-bat took. While there are some players in the game who are notorious for swinging at the first pitch, Burley's study proved that there is little risk in jumping ahead early in the count. If a guy is thrown a strike on the first pitch, but rips the heck out of it, that shouldnt be looked at as a demerit against the batter. For guys whose FpK% fell by more than 5 points from one season to the next, all but one saw their FpK% rebound the following season, although it was slightly more common for their FpK% to revert to their prior career FpK% norms: Expanding this FpK% decline threshold to -3 points or greater, we found that 40 starting pitchers saw such an erosion from one season to the next between 2010 and 2013. I have to go with scorekeeper in this instance for a few reasons. Batters: A lower F-Strike% is preferable for batters. How much is it likely to vary for starting pitchers? Thats a range of only 17%, and that makes each point very valuable. Davis, FACTS/FLUKES: Machado, Gallen, McMahon, Lauer, Longoria, BATTERS: Hitters to track in the spring, 2023, ARSENAL REPORT: Baseball Savant Tutorial #4: Search Function, RELIEVERS: Things to watch during Spring Training, RELIEVERS: NFBC ADPs take control of your draft, ROTISSERIE: The Tryhard Auctioneer - Nomination strategy, ROTISSERIE: Quantifying Risk - Building Your Risk Budget, HEAD-TO-HEAD: A Review of the 2023 Hitter Pools, HEAD-TO-HEAD: Identifying Consistent SP Targets for 2023, HEAD-TO-HEAD: Batter consistency check-up, ALTERNATIVE: 2023 Strat-O-Matic Ratings Guide - Pitchers, ALTERNATIVE: 2023 Strat-O-Matic Ratings Guide - Hitters, ALTERNATIVE: Scoresheet 2023 Defensive Range and Eligibility Changes, NFBC: Exploring the benefits of structured drafting, research in 2013 on swinging strike rates, stats and skills by starting pitcher ball-strike counts, Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. Z-Contact% = Number of pitches on which contact was made on pitches inside the zone / Swings on pitches inside the zone Contact% = Number of pitches on which contact was made / Swings Zone% =. It is considered a first-pitch strike when a pitcher strikes out . Last point - about tracking runs and how they got on. 60% is a good barometer. Ill track ptiches in more detail, but well start with ratio of balls to pitches thrown and work out way up from there. Big FpK% surgers from one year to the next tend to hold on to those gains in the third year or revert to their three-year FpK% average rather than regress to their prior career FpK% norm. It sounds extreme to project anyone to have a 50 point regression in batting average, but thats exactly what I expect to happen with Garcia in 2018 after looking into his plate discipline. In actuality, I think the BETTER advise is, "Avoid the 2-0 count." FPS: First pitch strikes; FPS%: First pitch strike percentage; FPSO%: % of FPS at-bats that result in an out; FPSW%: % of FPS at-bats that result in a walk; FPSH%: % of FPS at-bats that result in a hit 3 .