2009 MLB Strike % Leaders

In a post over the summer, I looked as to whether Joel Pineiro was getting lucky with his walks. His BB/9 at the time was astoundingly low (1.00), and I figured that it would go up based on his ball:strike ratio (it did, by 14%). This isn’t rocket science at all: Pineiro was maintaining a ridiculously low walk rate that resembled nothing of his skill set over his decently long career. However, it does let us look more closely at what I called EFF (for efficiency), which is basically how often a pitcher throws strikes relative to balls. So here are the 2009 Starting Pitcher leaders in the simple Strike %, which is simply just the percentage of strikes a pitcher throws out of all his pitches:

1) Johan Santana: 68.8
2) Roy Halladay: 68.6
3) Cliff Lee: 68.2
4) Ted Lilly: 68
5) Scott Baker: 67.7
6) Roy Oswalt: 67.7
7) Carl Pavano: 67.1
9) Justin Verlander: 66.9
10) Cole Hamels: 66.8

Bottom Five:

78) Trevor Cahill: 59
77) Yovani Gallardo: 59.2
76) Livan Hernandez: 59.8
75) Doug Davis: 60
74) Scott Feldman: 60.6

Attached is the excel file with all 78 names. Enjoy.

Thanks to Fangraphs for the data.

2009STRKEPRCNTGE.xls


Pat Andriola is an Analyst at Bloomberg Sports who formerly worked in Major League Baseball's Labor Relations Department. You can contact him at Patrick.Andriola@tufts.edu or follow him on Twitter @tuftspat

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