The 20 Best/Worst Groundballing Seasons, 1950-2001

As the title of the post indicates, this is a list of the 20 best and also worst groundballing seasons, 1950-2001, as estimated by the Retrosheet ground-out/air-out (GO/AO) data hosted at Baseball-Reference.

For more on the research here, please don’t hesitate to read the last article in this series or a discussion of same at Tango’s Inside the Book blog. I’ve also included a brief discussion of some name on this list after the leaderboards.

Here are the 20 best groundballing seasons (xGB% is Expected Groundball Percentage and xGB+ is xGB% relative to league average in the relevant season):

Pitcher		Team	Year	GO/AO	xGB%	LgAvg	xGB+
Steve Trout*	CHC	1984	3.62	67.9%	43.2%	157
Tommy John*	LAD	1978	3.72	68.4%	43.9%	156
Tommy John*	LAD	1977	3.87	69.2%	44.6%	155
John Denny	PHI	1983	2.90	63.5%	43.9%	145
Kevin Brown	FLA	1997	2.99	64.1%	44.4%	144
Bob Stanley	BOS	1982	2.82	62.9%	44.3%	142
Tommy John*	NYY	1988	2.57	61.1%	43.2%	142
Bill Swift	SEA	1988	2.57	61.1%	43.2%	142
John Denny	CLE	1981	2.79	62.7%	44.6%	141
Kevin Brown	FLA	1996	2.70	62.1%	44.3%	140
Dennis Lamp	CHW	1982	2.68	61.9%	44.3%	140
Orel Hershiser	LAD	1984	2.45	60.1%	43.2%	139
Kevin Brown	TEX	1989	2.47	60.3%	43.3%	139
Jerry Reuss*	LAD	1982	2.60	61.3%	44.3%	139
Tommy John*	LAD	1976	2.50	60.5%	43.7%	138
Kevin Brown	TEX	1990	2.37	59.5%	43.0%	138
Ray Fontenot*	NYY	1984	2.40	59.7%	43.2%	138
Al Brazle*	STL	1950	2.24	58.4%	42.2%	138
Chuck Rainey	CHC	1983	2.50	60.5%	43.9%	138
Bill Swift	SFG	1993	2.43	60.0%	43.5%	138

Here are the 20 worst groundballing seasons:

Pitcher		Team	Year	GO/AO	xGB%	LgAvg	xGB+
Sid Fernandez*	NYM	1989	0.35	21.6%	43.3%	50
Eric Milton*	MIN	1998	0.43	25.7%	44.3%	58
Sid Fernandez*	NYM	1992	0.42	25.2%	43.2%	58
Herb Score*	CLE	1955	0.41	24.7%	41.6%	59
Sid Fernandez*	NYM	1990	0.43	25.7%	43.0%	60
Sid Fernandez*	NYM	1986	0.45	26.6%	43.7%	61
D. Eckersley	CLE	1977	0.47	27.4%	44.6%	61
Kevin Foster	CHC	1995	0.48	27.8%	44.6%	62
Luis Tiant	BOS	1977	0.49	28.2%	44.6%	63
Sid Fernandez*	NYM	1988	0.47	27.4%	43.2%	64
Catfish Hunter	OAK	1973	0.49	28.2%	44.4%	64
Bill Butler*	KCR	1969	0.50	28.6%	45.0%	64
Rick Helling	TEX	2000	0.48	27.8%	43.5%	64
Sid Fernandez*	NYM	1985	0.49	28.2%	44.1%	64
Roger Moret*	BOS	1974	0.49	28.2%	43.7%	65
Rick Helling	TEX	1998	0.50	28.6%	44.3%	65
Eric Milton*	MIN	2001	0.50	28.6%	43.5%	66
J.H. Johnson*	OAK	1978	0.51	29.0%	43.9%	66
Connie Marrero	WSH	1952	0.49	28.2%	42.4%	67
Denny Neagle*	COL	2001	0.51	29.0%	43.5%	67

Notes:

• Of Tommy John, whose name appears frequently on the leaderboard, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers says, “John threw a sinking fastball 85 to 90 percent of the time from the beginning to the end of his major league career.”

Said Guide also quotes from John’s biography, as follows:

I was blessed in that my ball naturally broke down. The sinkerball was my meal ticket. But I also learned the mechanics that added to my natural ball movement. I learned them when I was with the White Sox. Ray Berres, the pitching coach there, taught me to throw with my hand position going from straight up to straight down. It takes effort and a lot of practice to throw the ball that way, since the uncorrected tendency is to keep your hand positioned at an angle. It’s called throwing high-to-low, and that’s the way I pitched, driving the ball down with my hand and fingers.

• Sid Fernandez, whose name appears constantly among the most fly ball-oriented of pitchers, was noted for throwing a “rising” fastball — and is, in fact, cited as an example of such at the Wikipedia entry for same. Of Fernandez, Wikipedia notes that Fernandez “was known for throwing a rising fastball from a slightly ‘submarine’ motion.”

• Kevin Brown was sooooooooooo good — not only featuring excellent GO/AO numbers, but also, at his best, posting huge K/BB ratios.

• If we included numbers for 2002-10, Derek Lowe and Brandon Webb would both feature multiple seasons on the top-20 leaderboard and Chris Young would place among the laggards at least twice, I think it is.

• For a spreadsheet with all relevant data, click here.