About two years ago I attempted to delve further into plate discipline with two articles: Dissecting Plate Discipline Part 1, Part 2.

And then a year later I took an additional look at plate discipline: More on Plate Discipline

All batters now have plate discipline stats available dating back to 2005. Here’s what they are:

• O-Swing%: The percentage of pitches a batter swings at outside the strike zone.
• Z-Swing%: The percentage of pitches a batter swings at inside the strike zone.
• Swing%: The overall percentage of pitches a batter swings at.
• O-Contact%: The percentage of pitches a batter makes contact with outside the strike zone when swinging the bat.
• Z-Contact%: The percentage of pitches a batter makes contact with inside the strike zone when swinging the bat.
• Contact%: The overall percentage of a batter makes contact with when swinging the bat.
• Zone%: The overall percentage of pitches a batter sees inside the strike zone.

What you’ll want to know is the major league averages for each stat:

Season O-Swing Z-Swing  Swing  O-Contact Z-Contact Contact   Zone
2005     20.3%   68.0%  46.0%      51.8%     88.3%   80.8%  53.8%
2006     23.5%   66.6%  46.1%      57.4%     88.5%   81.0%  52.6%
2007     25.0%   66.6%  45.9%      60.8%     88.2%   80.8%  50.3%

All the location data is from Baseball Info Solutions and you can find all these stats in the player pages at the very bottom: Vladimir Guerrero

For years, Chien-Ming Wang has been the poster boy for successful pitching without strikeouts. He’s used a dominating sinker to induce a ton of ground balls, allowing him to keep hitters off the bases even without generating swings and misses. By throwing strikes and getting hitters to pound the ball into the dirt, he’s turned himself into a front line pitcher and helped analysts get away from evaluating pitchers solely by strikeout rate.

However, unlike some other groundball artists, Wang has always had strikeout stuff. He throws a 91-95 MPH fastball and an 83-86 MPH slider, and both pitches have serious movement. For comparison, his velocity on these two pitches basically matches what John Smoltz throws to a tee, and only 15 pitchers in baseball history have recorded more strikeouts than John Smoltz. Most pitchers with low strikeout rates simply don’t have the ability to make hitters miss, but Wang’s stuff has always suggested that he should be able to, but was choosing to focus on pitching to contact instead.

That may be changing (as last night’s 9 strikeout performance hightlights). Here are his strikeout rates and ground ball rates plotted on respective graphs:

The K/9 and GB% are going the opposite direction, and both are doing so fairly quickly. In 2008, Wang’s posting a league average strikeout rate and a GB% that, while above average, doesn’t put him in the class of extreme sinkerball types. This is after he posted an increase in his strikeout rate last year that corresponded with a slight decline in his ground ball rate. Pitcher aging curves have shown that, for most pitchers, strikeout rates peak early and declines as a player ages – Wang is seeing the opposite of that happen right now.

He’s always been an interesting pitcher, and this new development just makes him even more curious.

Ignore the shiny 1.50 ERA that Boston rookie Justin Masterson has after just one major league start. ERAs are overrated at the best of times. The most important numbers on Masterson’s April 24 line against the Angels were the two hits allowed in six innings and the 11-3 ground outs to fly outs. Thanks to Boston’s impressive pitching depth, he was returned to Double-A after his first major league appearance.

Masterson, 23, was originally selected by Boston in the second round (71st overall) of the 2006 amateur draft out of San Diego State University. He is already perhaps one of the best pitchers in professional baseball when it comes to inducing ground balls. This is important because ground balls cannot fly out of the ballpark for a home run. Ground balls cannot sail over the heads of outfielders for bases-clearing triples. If you can find a ground ball pitcher that can also miss a lot of bats and strike out a ton of batters, then you have something special.

And Masterson is right on the cusp of being something special. He won’t strike out a ton of batters, as he averaged 7.20 K/9 in his minor league career coming into 2008. But he doesn’t walk many batters (career 2.04 BB/9) and he keeps the ball in the yard, having allowed only eight homers in 185.1 career innings prior to this season (0.39 HR/9). Keep in mind he also pitched at the launching pad known as Lancaster and allowed only four homers in 95.2 innings. This season in the minors, Masterson was averaging 3.57 ground balls for every fly ball. Last season, between High-A ball and Double-A he averaged 2.46 – including 2.05 at Lancaster and 3.52 in Portland.

The best ground ball pitchers in the majors in 2007 included Derek Lowe, Felix Hernandez, Fausto Carmona and Brandon Webb, heady company and a group for Masterson to aspire to join.

Coming into the 2008 season the National League East had been reduced to a three-team race between the Braves, Mets, and Phillies. Nobody pegged the Marlins as potential contenders even with Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis; their subsequent trade to the Tigers did nothing to help the cause.

Looking at the standings right now might require a double take because the three pre-season contenders currently rank 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in the division. The first place team? Well, none other than the pesky fish from Florida, who currently sport a 15-10 record and a 1.5 game lead over the Mets and Phillies. This isn’t likely to continue but they have had a good first month and deserve some recognition. One of the major reasons for their early success is the stellar production from leftfielder Josh Willingham. He will not make headlines as a fantasy or statistical superstud, like teammate Hanley Ramirez, but Willingham has quietly become a very solid hitter.

His 2006 and 2007 seasons were pretty consistent, evidenced by the following breakdowns:

• 2006: 142 GP, .277/.356/.496, 56 XBH, 109 K, 21.7 K%, 0.50 BB/K
• 2007: 144 GP, .265/.364/.463, 57 XBH, 122 K, 23.4 K%, 0.54 BB/K

Though we are still suffering from some small sample size issues, Willingham has seemingly increased his production levels relative to the previous two seasons. In fact, his RC/27 has vastly increased:

I would love to say that Willingham will keep this up, as I draft him for my fantasy team every year, but his balls-in-play rates just do not seem to point in that direction. Now, this is not to say he will not have a productive year, but rather that his production is very likely to level off in the coming weeks or months. Here is a look at his GB/FB/LD rates:

As you can see, his percentage of grounders has increased upwards of ten percent. Due to this increase, his BABIP currently rest at .348, much higher than the .310 and .308 posted in the last two seasons. Another so called red flag is the fact that his HR/FB % has increased from 12% to 23%; while his percentage of flyballs has decreased by about ten percent he is hitting a little over ten percent more of them out of the ballpark.

He could defy the odds and put up an incredible season but it would come with the potential stigma of having high luck-based indicators, IE, a fluke. His numbers should improve from those posted last year but not along the lines of what would occur should we extrapolate his current statistics over the rest of the season.

Last season, Jack Cust was one of the out-of-nowhere stories of the year. He’d received all of four plate appearances in the majors from 2004 to 2006, and had essentially been relegated to Triple-A slugger while bouncing from organization to organization. The Padres sold him to the A’s for cash after Oakland experienced enough injury problems that they felt they needed a warm body, and Cust responded to the opportunity by hitting .256/.408/.504 and becoming a key part of their line-up.

2008 hasn’t gone as well. He’s currently sitting at .161/.373/.242 through 83 plate appearances, one of the stranger batting lines you’ll ever see. He has just seven hits on the season, but he’s drawn 20 walks in 22 games, so he’s posting a respectable on base percentage despite the fact that he’s just not hitting. Generally, you’d look at a .161 batting average and conclude that the guy is just in a slump, and that regression to the mean will make that bounce back in the not too distant future. Jack Cust isn’t your normal hitter, though. He strikes out at unbelievable 41.4% clip, making contact less often than just about any other position player in recent history. Ryan Howard and Adam Dunn combine to cover the top three spots in single season strikeout totals in major league history, and even they didn’t get particularly close to striking out in 41% of their at-bats with career rates of 35% and 32% respectively.

I was going to show you a chart of the K% for those three plotted next to each other, but realized it wouldn’t be very helpful, because Jack Cust’s markings aren’t on it. See, the Fangraphs K% chart tops out at 40%, and Cust is consistently above that mark. He’s literally off the charts.

When you strike out as much as Cust does, you have to be amazing when you make contact. Last year, Cust was, posting a .366 batting average on balls in play and whacking 26 home runs in 124 games. So far, in April, Cust’s batting average on balls in play is down to .242, and only one of his seven hits are home runs. Even when he hits the ball, it’s not going anywhere, and that’s made him a significant liability at the plate during the first month of the season. With the signing of Frank Thomas to be the regular DH, Cust is going to have to play left field to keep his spot in the line-up. Unfortunately for him and the A’s, he’s about as good at that as he is at making contact. He might be the worst defensive player in baseball – if he’s not, he’s close.

Add it all up, and the A’s have a guy who has to torch the ball when he hits it in order to be a valuable player, and when he’s not driving the ball, he’s the least productive regular in the major leagues. Due to his defensive problems, it’s going to be harder and harder for the A’s to justify penciling him into the line-up if he doesn’t start producing better results when he makes contact. The A’s are surprising a lot of people by standing at 16-10 through 26 games, but they’re not going to be able to stick with Cust killing them in the field and at the plate forever.

The San Francisco Giants currently sport one of the worst offenses of all time, but have posted an 11-14 record on the strength of some quality pitching. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum, both of whom have been anointed by various pundits as the best young pitcher in the National League in the last year. Lincecum, in particular, is getting plaudits at the moment, as he’s off to a terrific start to the 2008 campaign, and his tiny frame and unique delivery make him interesting to watch even when he’s not dominating. However, the Giants don’t just have a big two, and there’s a guy getting lost in the hype shuffle.

See that green dot? That’s Jonathan Sanchez, San Francisco’s 25 year old southpaw with a knockout slider. He’s struggled with command problems and nagging health issues around his arm, but he’s healthy now and making hitters look foolish. His fastball doesn’t have the velocity it used to have, but he makes up for it with a slider that’s among the best swing-and-miss pitches in the game.

Using that weapon, he’s reinstating himself into the discussion of potential aces hanging out in San Francisco. In fact, the K/BB ratio above makes a pretty strong argument that Sanchez is a better bet for the future than Cain, and the difference between he and Lincecum isn’t nearly as large as most people would believe.

When you’re talking about good young arms in baseball, don’t forget Jonathan Sanchez.

While Tom Gorzelanny may have had a no-hitter through 4+ innings on Thursday, John Danks threw five perfect innings this afternoon before his bid at history came to an end. Two major roadblocks stood in the way of a potential perfect game coinciding in the form of Brian Burres completely shutting down the White Sox offense. Burres went eight innings, giving up three hits and no walks, while striking out four en route to his third win of the season. He threw 98 pitches, two-thirds of which were strikes. Danks lost the perfect game but still had a very effective outing, lasting 6.1 innings while giving up just four hits; he did not walk a batter and struck out four. Of his 92 pitches, 64 were strikes (69.5%). The game looked completely even through the first five frames as evident by the steady polygraph pace in the game graph:

After five innings, no runs had scored, nobody had been walked, and the only two hits had been singles off the bats of Jim Thome and Carlos Quentin. Danks quickly lost his perfect game and no-hitter when Adam Jones singled to start the sixth inning. Jones swiped second base and came around to score on Guillero Quiroz’s first major league home run. A tad rattled, Danks gave up a single to Luis Hernandez; after giving up nothing for five innings he surrendered three consecutive hits. He settled down after the Hernandez at-bat, though, retiring Brian Roberts, Melvin Mora, and Nick Markakis. Heading into the bottom of the sixth the Orioles had staked Burres to a 2-0 lead.

A Toby Hall single in the bottom of the sixth broke Burres’s streak of 12 consecutive batters retired but he would not allow another runner to reach base for the rest of his time on the mound. After inducing a Juan Uribe groundout to the end the eighth inning his day came to an end. The Orioles provided three insurance runs in the top of the ninth off of Octavio Dotel before Matt Albers and George Sherrill closed the game out in the bottom half of the inning. Though the White Sox did score a run on a bases loaded hit by pitch from Carlos Quentin, it was too little, too late. Joe Crede flied out to end the game as the Orioles won 5-1.

Coming into this start, Burres’s numbers (2-1, 3.63 ERA) were a bit deceiving, as his K/9, BB/9, K/BB, BAA, and WHIP were all below the league average. In fact, he had a K/BB of just 0.90, surrendering 10 walks to go along with just nine punchouts. This helped to translate his 3.63 ERA into a 4.82 WHIP. Despite all of these below average rates he completely dominated a first-place offense simultaneously bringing the Orioles into a first-place tie with the Red Sox.

Earlier today I wrote about Tom Gorzelanny’s interesting and less-than-accurate game last night, when at one point he had a line of 4.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 7 BB, 4 K. What I did not realize is that Blue Jays righty Dustin McGowan had a very similar game against the Rays. While discussing some of our favorite young pitchers, Fangraphs reader and Tampa Bay Rays blogger Tommy Rancel said, “…if you thought the Gorzelanny game was weird, you should have seen McGowan against the Rays. He struck the first two batters out on six pitches and ended up walking 7 in just four innings.”

Facing 22 batters in 4+ innings, McGowan gave up 4 hits and 4 runs, striking out 6 and walking 7; this topsy-turvy performance in part led to quite the streaky game graph:

He threw 88 pitches with a perfect split of 44 strikes and 44 balls. As Tommy mentioned, his first inning was strong: He struck out Akinori Iwamura and Carl Crawford on six pitches and induced a groundout from BJ Upton with another three pitches, ending the frame with eight strikes out of nine pitches. In the second inning, McGowan’s accuracy took a hit, throwing just nine strikes out of 17 pitches. Despite this, he still managed to strike out Carlos Pena, Evan Longoria, and newcomer Gabe Gross; a walk to Eric Hinske was his only blemish.

The Blue Jays scored two runs off of Andy Sonnanstine in the top of the third, but McGowan could not shut the Rays down in the bottom half of the inning. After walking Dioner Navarro and surrendering a single to Jason Bartlett, Iwamura sacrificed the runners to second and third. Crawford knocked in Navarro on a groundout, to get one of the runs back, before Upton went down swinging. Again, McGowan’s accuracy was subpar, throwing just 11 strikes out of 20 pitches. Through three innings, he had a 2-1 lead and had compiled the following line: 3 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 6 K. Of his 46 pitches 28 were strikes.

He fell apart in the fourth inning but managed to limit the damage. With one out, Evan Longoria tripled and promptly scored on an Eric Hinske single. After Hinske unsuccessfully attempted a steal of second base, McGowan proceeded to walk Gross, Navarro, and Bartlett to load the bases. Luckily, Iwamura flew out to leftfield to end the threat. The inning saw him throw 32 pitches, just 11 of which were strikes. The game was tied 2-2, but McGowan’s line now stood at: 4 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 5 BB, 6 K.

The Blue Jays jumped back on top, 3-2, in the fifth but McGowan again went walk-crazy in the bottom of the inning. After Carl Crawford singled and stole second, he walked Upton and Pena to load the bases. John Gibbons had seen enough and brought in Brian Tallet to potentially record a “Houdini.” Things did not go well for Tallet as all three inherited runners scored; the Rays went onto win 5-3.

From 2000-2007, there have been 200 games in which a pitcher walked 7+ batters; this averages out to 25 games per season. With 30 teams and 162 games per team there are 4860 games in a year (give or take). On average, a miniscule .005 percent of the games this decade, or 0.83 games per team, have seen pitchers walk this many batters. Last night there were two games going on at the same time that accomplished this statistical rarity.

When you look at the following graph, what is your initial reaction?

Now, take that reaction and add the following information:

1. Catcher
2. Turns 32 years old in two weeks
3. Right handed pull hitter, your team plays in a park that hates right handed pull hitters

Okay, now, let’s go through the formula. If you take Initial Reaction + Position Knowledge + Age + Park Suitability and your conclusion is Contract Extension, congratulations, you’re qualified to work for the Mariners. They just extended Kenji Johjima through the 2011 season. Johjima’s a solid player and has been a real asset since arriving from Japan, but the timing of this move seems odd. Top prospect Jeff Clement is tearing the cover off the ball in Tacoma, and while his defense is underwhelming, the team could really use a left handed bat in the line-up. Extending Johjima ensures that Clement will be moving to first base or designated hitter, reducing his value to the club and taking away the chance to balance the line-up.

The Mariners just continue to fail to learn lessons from their past mistakes. The organization consistently gives overly long contracts to replaceable declining veterans, then gets surprised when those guys don’t perform at their career averages. I’m sure they’ll be stunned in several years when Carlos Silva and Johjima are struggling and eating up a good portion of the payroll along with premium roster spots.

Davis Romero, who just turned 25, is not the most well-known southpaw with the last name ‘Romero’ in the Toronto Blue Jays organization. That distinction goes to 2005 first round draft pick Ricky Romero. Davis is a diminutive starting pitcher (5-9, 140) from Panama, who was signed as a non-drafted free agent in 1999.

Prior to 2007, Romero posted career minor league numbers of a 3.37 ERA, 8.15 H/9, 2.43 BB/9 and 9.70 K/9. Impressive numbers but Romero continually had to prove himself at every level due to his size, or lack thereof. In 2006, Romero finally earned a late-season promotion to Toronto and posted a 3.86 ERA in 16.1 innings, but allowed 10.47 H/9 and 3.31 BB/9. He also had only 5.51 K/9.

In the spring of 2007, Romero’s body broke down and he underwent labrum surgery on his throwing shoulder and missed all of 2007. The good news, though, is that he is back and pitching in Triple-A Syracuse. The even better news is that Romero has looked very good, considering the severity of the surgery – one that many pitchers never make it back from.

While throwing with a strict pitch count, Romero has posted a 1.54 ERA in four starts. Over 11.2 innings, Romero has allowed only four hits and two runs. He has also struck out 13 and has not allowed a hit to a left-handed batter. On the down side, Romero has walked seven and is allowing as many flyballs as groundballs.

Even so, Romero is an interesting player to keep an eye considering the scarcity of quality left-handed pitching at the major league level.