How Should Pitchers Approach 0-2 Counts?

There is an interesting quote from Greg Maddux about the relative merits (or, if you’re Maddux, demerits) of “wasting” a pitch in a 0-2 count versus continuing to attack the hitter. Throwing a pitch outside of the zone and hoping for a hopeless swing in an 0-2 count is a baseball convention that’s ingrained in pitchers from the time they are adolescents. The idea is to not give the batter the chance to put the ball in play when the pitcher is in a supremely advantageous position. Maddux eschewed this notion. He said, “The hitter is most vulnerable when you get him in an 0-2 bind. My goal is to take him out immediately. I’m going right after him, not fooling around with wasting a pitch up high or throwing one in the dirt.”

Maddux’s impetus for questioning convention was twofold. First, a waste pitch is (wait for it) a waste. It is a waste of a pitcher’s time and energy and gets him out of rhythm. If you believe that on any given day a pitcher has a finite number of effective pitches in him, then throwing a pitch without the singular purpose of using that pitch to get the batter out is foolhardy. Maddux’s second gripe is that batters have the lowest batting average in 0-2 counts, so why would you fear throwing the ball in or around the strike zone? He also mentions the pitch is usually so far away from the strike zone that the hitter will lay off by default, giving the opposition the opportunity to see one more pitch out of the pitcher’s hand. Maddux is seemingly inferring that seeing this extra pitch assists the batter in timing up a pitcher’s motion, allowing them to gain a small edge in being able to better pick up the ball coming out of the hand.

The merits of a 0-2 waste pitch has been explored in the past. Earlier this yeah, Jim Albert used the same Maddux quote as a jumping off point for evaluating 0-2 pitches at his blog Exploring Baseball Data with R (as an aside, Jim is one of the coauthors of a must-have book if you are interested in getting into baseball analysis). Jim noted that pitchers don’t tend to use fastballs as waste pitches; when pitchers do waste pitches, they are more likely to bury breaking balls below the strike zone. He did note that 0-2 fastballs were located higher than fastballs in other counts, but they still were often in and around the strike zone, and thus were not waste pitches. Back in 2011, John Dewan at Bill James Online found that, in terms of the average plate appearance outcome, there was only a 10th of a run difference in favor of the pitcher between throwing in the strike zone versus outside of it, so there was no clear dominant strategy.

In 20019, Dan Turkenkopf looked at waste pitches in a two part series at The Hardball Times. The first part consisted of Dan delving into how often pitchers threw 0-2 waste pitches in various splits; the second part went into whether leveraging a waste pitch was worthwhile. Dan found that pitchers not only don’t see a benefit in throwing these pitches, but that it actually hurts them.

I decided to investigate this phenomenon myself. I will say from the jump that Dan’s research is very good and he definitively came to the conclusion that waste pitches were not advantageous from the perspective of the pitcher. However, his definition of a waste pitch was relatively narrow. In the first part of his series, Dan defined the “non-waste zone” as any pitch within 16 inches (1.33 feet) of the top, bottom, and outer edge of the strike zone and within 14 inches (1.25 feet) of the inner edge of the zone. By Dan’s definition, a waste pitch was not even within the same zip code of the strike zone. As such, the fact that he came to the conclusion that these pitches were counterproductive for pitchers is not surprising: batters rarely chase pitches in Dan’s waste zone. In my analysis, I am going to broaden the range of possible waste pitches considerably. I am going to call any pitch outside of MLBAM’s gameday zone a waste pitch and, correspondingly, any pitch inside that zone a non-waste pitch.

Now back to the Maddux quote. His second point is easier to investigate. Whether Maddux is referring to batting average including strikeouts or batting average on balls in play, batting average is lower in 0-2 counts because of the abnormal number of pitches outside the zone and shadow of the zone. Those pitches induce more swings and misses and balls in play from these areas yield lower expected results in terms of exit velocity, hit probability, and rate of extra base hits. In all counts besides 0-2 during the 2019 and ’20 seasons, pitchers threw in the zone 49% of the time. In 0-2 counts, that rate fell to 36%. Even when you compare 0-2 pitches to all other two strike pitches, this behavior stands out. In two strike counts not including 0-2, pitchers throw pitches in and around the zone 46% of the time compared to the aforementioned 36% rate on 0-2, a difference of almost 28% when considering the 0-2 rate as the baseline.

The average 0-2 pitch is much less competitive than all other options; thus, the batting average on those pitches should be lower. Pitches in 0-2 counts are more likely to be off the plate, which results in less contact; hitters made contact on pitches inside the zone about 30 percentage points more than those outside the zone. Given the proportion of pitches that are “wasted” on 0-2, it comes as no surprise that batters hit .154 in 0-2 counts versus .260 in all other counts from 2019 through 2020. So Maddux is correct, batters do have a lower batting average in 0-2 counts. But this is a product of the frequency with which pitchers throw pitches with the purpose of inducing a chase on 0-2. If you look at all counts, the batting average on pitches in and out of strike zone is .287 and .157, respectively, which is a very similar split to the batting average in and out of 0-2 counts. One can then assume that the 0-2 batting average split is mainly the product of the waste pitch phenomenon.

Analyzing count-based batting average filters out pitches taken for a ball, which make up a vast majority of 0-2 pitches:

Pitch Outcome Rates on 0-2 Pitches
In Zone Ball% CS% Foul% BBE% SwStr% Foul Tip%
No 56.8 1.0 20.5 7.7 12.7 0.0
Yes 2.7 6.7 52.6 27.1 9.5 1.3
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Events that occur at least 1% of the time; Data from 2019-20

Waste pitches result in balls 56.8% of the time but yield more swinging strikes and fewer balls in play compared to pitches in and around the zone, as explained above. One might quibble that waste pitches are so much more likely to result in a called ball that not challenging the hitter is foolish. But there is little difference between a 0-2 and 1-2 count:

Run Values per 100 for 0-2 Pitch Outcomes
Event RV per 100
Ball 2.23
Called Strike -17.3
Foul 0
Foul Bunt -27.80
Foul Tip -18.81
HBP 44.62
BBE 12.05
Missed Bunt -22.60
Swinging Strike -18.53
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Data from 2019-20; Run Values from perspective of hitter

If the batter knows a pitch is going to end of out of the strike zone, they will not swing. But more often than not, pitchers should be aggressive in inducing swings on pitches out of the zone in 0-2 counts because the cost of a ball is minimal, as one can see in the relatively small run value per 100 pitches for a ball in 0-2 counts. The obvious counterpoint is that a hit by pitch is a detrimental plate appearance outcome for the pitcher, so they must be careful about where exactly they throw the pitch outside of the zone. Nevertheless, a ball in play on 0-2 is almost six times as detrimental as a called ball in this situation. The pitcher is in a spot where they can effectively mitigate the effects of the batter putting the ball in play without any repercussions. Put all these factors together and throwing a waste pitch clearly is advantageous in terms of run expectancy:

RV per 100 Pitches for In and Out of Zone 0-2 Pitches
In Zone RV per 100
No -0.39
Yes 0.70
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Data from 2019-20; Run Values from perspective of hitter

Another way of looking at the benefits of an out-of-zone pitch on 0-2 is how it affects the rest of a plate appearance:

PA Outcomes for 0-2 Pitches
In Zone 0-2 K% wOBA wOBA No K
Yes 41.1 .231 .392
No 45.2 .217 .394
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Data from 2019-20

The first column in the table indicates whether a pitch out of the zone was thrown on 0-2 in plate appearances that reached 0-2. The second column is the strikeout percentage in the plate appearance based on how the pitcher approached the 0-2 pitch. The third column is the overall wOBA allowed in those plate appearances and the last column is the wOBA allowed when you strip out strikeouts. This gives insight into plate appearance outcomes for each pitch strategy by accounting for all possible outcomes after the pitch. Plate appearances in which a waste pitch was thrown on 0-2 resulted in more strikeouts and (most importantly) a lower wOBA to the tune of 6% relative to the results when no waste pitch was thrown. When you take out plate appearances that end in strikeouts, the results are almost identical. This speaks to the small cost for the pitcher if the count goes from 0-2 to 1-2. Even if you take out the main advantage of throwing the waste pitch (the chances of inducing a swinging strike), throwing a pitch outside of the zone on 0-2 does not materially change the expected results of the plate appearance.

What can we take away? While it is difficult to address Maddux’s first point (the cost of wasting a pitch in terms of time, energy, and rhythm), his second point does not seem to hold up. There are tangible benefits to trying to get the batter to chase a pitch 0-2 largely due to the small cost of the batter taking the pitch. Maddux is correct that batters often do not swing at pitches out of the zone; batters only swing at 28.4% of these pitches in 0-2 counts and, as I mentioned above, 0-2 pitches outside the zone result in a ball 56.8% of the time.

This study does not indicate that pitchers should always throw a waste pitch; if a pitcher develops an obvious tendency, batters might not swing. Still, there is a large enough gap in the results and a small enough gap in performance on 0-2 versus 1-2 counts that pitchers may want to consider being more aggressive inducing swings outside the zone when up 0-2.





Carmen is a part-time contributor to FanGraphs. An engineer by education and trade, he spends too much of his free time thinking about baseball.

13 Comments
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ScottyBmember
2 years ago

Maddux is clearly indicating the downside of running up pitch counts. Which today seems even more important. Is there any way to build in the fact that a pitcher who “wastes” 4-7 pitches per outing is throwing 4-7 more pitches, or facing 1-2 fewer batters per outing, with all the resultant (albeit small) downsides.

jankees1991member
2 years ago
Reply to  ScottyB

I’m not even sure how you’d quantify this, since not all pitches are created equal. Who’s to say a waste pitch up in the zone is a max effort pitch by the pitcher, as opposed to one he’s just throwing up there, akin to a high meatball?

This seems like one of those intangibles that varies so much based on the individual’s preference that it isn’t even worth trying to analyze, because it’s mostly statistically insignificant.

dodgerbleu
2 years ago
Reply to  jankees1991

A lot of pitchers really get into that waste pitch – it’s a waste pitch, so overthrowing the fastball or spiking your breaking ball (especially with the bases empty) is often the point. That’s generally not low energy. Throwing a high meatball 0-2 isn’t going to fly in high school, let alone professional ball.

But I agree with jankees that there is too much individual preference to try and account for. Some guys will be best served throwing a chase pitch because they’ve set up the batter for it, or they just don’t have that good of stuff. Others will be best served going after them because they already run high pitch counts or they have nasty stuff or they have questionable command. I’m reminded of a Sandy Koufax quote I’m going to paraphrase.. “I became Sandy Koufax when I stopped trying to make the batter miss the ball and started trying to make him hit the ball.”