Wasted Pitches and the Pitchers Who Make the Most of Them

You’ll often hear of a pitcher “wasting” a pitch. Up 0-2 in a count, for example, the pitcher fires off something well out of the zone, hoping the defensive hitter will hack at it, missing or putting the ball in play weakly. The cost here is minimal – the cost of that pitcher having thrown an extra pitch and the change in count from 0-2 to 1-2.

Count	AVG	OBP	SLG
After 0-2	0.167	0.196	0.250
After 1-2	0.179	0.227	0.271
0-2	0.151	0.159	0.216
*Since 2012

The value there is pretty clear. Enticing a batter to swing 0-2 means little chance of damage being done, while the cost of the count shifting more favorably towards the batter is small.

But do pitchers only waste pitches in these unique situations where the cost-benefit trade-off is so obvious? And how effective are they in actually coaxing swings?

Thanks to the wonder that is Daren of Baseball Savant, even someone without database skills (like myself) can sift through all of the league’s pitch data and (eventually) get a grasp on the league-wide usage of “waste pitches.”

The parameters I’ve set for waste pitches are shown in the chart below, and you can see right away that the “usable” pitch zone is wider than the strike zone and slightly higher. Pitches outside of this second box are called balls 80 percent of the time and called strikes just 0.7 percent of the time, so it’s roughly the area in which any non-swing is going to be called a ball.

I can tell you off the bat that batters still swing and miss at pitches out of this second zone 9.5 percent of the time and are particularly susceptible to low waste pitches (a 15.1 percent swinging strike rate despite just a 0.2 percent called strike rate).

So, looking at everything together, we know right away that these waste pitches go for balls 80 percent of the time, meaning a pitcher is improving his situation just once in five tries. But not all of these are created equally, of course, so it’s necessary to filter down by count – knowing how often these pitches are thrown in each count will give us an idea of how often pitchers are actually wasting a pitch and how often they’re just missing wildly.

The data below is for 2013 and the 2014 season so far (I had hoped to go beyond that, but Excel tops out around a million rows):

Count	Total Pitches	# Wasted	% Wasted	# Wasted Swings	% Wasted Swings	# Wasted Called Strikes	Wasted Called Strike %
0-0	222923	68770	30.85%	7011	10.19%	1278	1.86%
0-1	109580	42674	38.94%	8798	20.62%	202	0.47%
0-2	54031	29444	54.49%	8209	27.88%	44	0.15%
1-0	88599	26003	29.35%	3799	14.61%	501	1.93%
1-1	87652	29699	33.88%	7050	23.74%	229	0.77%
1-2	79421	37368	47.05%	12208	32.67%	87	0.23%
2-0	30777	8613	27.99%	1010	11.73%	170	1.97%
2-1	45177	12497	27.66%	3105	24.85%	151	1.21%
2-2	67706	25473	37.62%	9104	35.74%	99	0.39%
3-0	10267	3280	31.95%	39	1.19%	108	3.29%
3-1	18543	4376	23.60%	819	18.72%	63	1.44%
3-2	40098	10654	26.57%	4061	38.12%	55	0.52%

The numbers are actually quite striking – it turns out that over 2013 and 2014, pitchers have wasted more than half of all 0-2 pitches and nearly half of all 1-2 pitches. In return, defensive batters have swung at these wasted pitches more than a quarter of the time. Particularly in 2-2 and 3-2 counts, when the incentive for the batter to stay alive is stronger, batters appear to be much more defensive, creeping up to nearly a 40 percent swing rate on bad offerings. Chip something fringey away and hope for a juicier offering on the next pitch.

It’s also worth noting that the data here backs up previous research on umpire trends, in that umpires are far more likely to call one of these wasted pitches a strike in a 3-0 count than in any other situation, and they have hardly called them as such at all in 0-2 counts.

But not all pitchers are created equally, of course. We know this because the O-Swing rate for qualified pitchers over the past two seasons ranges anywhere from 25.3 percent to 39.9 percent, and the qualified Zone rates range from 38.4 percent to 53.5 percent. Different pitchers are going to approach these waste pitches differently, either due to a lack of command or an assumed ability to coax more swings on them.

The table below shows the qualified pitchers (for this season) who have “wasted” pitches most and least often over this season and last:

Name	Pitches	Total Wasted	% Wasted	# Wasted Swings	% Wasted Swings	# Called Strikes	% Wasted Called Strike
Roenis Elias	699	300	42.92%	76	25.33%	20	6.67%
Hiroki Kuroda	3874	1543	39.83%	378	24.50%	14	0.91%
Masahiro Tanaka	631	251	39.78%	94	37.45%	3	1.20%
Yovani Gallardo	3742	1454	38.86%	255	17.54%	14	0.96%
Drew Hutchison	665	256	38.50%	62	24.22%	4	1.56%
Yu Darvish	4063	1558	38.35%	337	21.63%	14	0.90%
Francisco Liriano	3109	1192	38.34%	313	26.26%	11	0.92%
Edwin Jackson	3599	1374	38.18%	296	21.54%	9	0.66%
Wily Peralta	3676	1366	37.16%	283	20.72%	19	1.39%
Tim Lincecum	3924	1454	37.05%	326	22.42%	7	0.48%
—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Mike Leake	3595	1130	31.43%	244	21.59%	4	0.35%
Hisashi Iwakuma	3183	995	31.26%	295	29.65%	7	0.70%
Jose Fernandez	3316	1027	30.97%	269	26.19%	4	0.39%
Bronson Arroyo	3482	1075	30.87%	237	22.05%	18	1.67%
Travis Wood	3817	1171	30.68%	244	20.84%	4	0.34%
Jhoulys Chacin	3048	934	30.64%	164	17.56%	5	0.54%
David Price	3450	1048	30.38%	228	21.76%	21	2.00%
Chris Sale	3699	1105	29.87%	251	22.71%	11	1.00%
Bartolo Colon	3449	922	26.73%	173	18.76%	11	1.19%
Cliff Lee	4090	1024	25.04%	241	23.54%	7	0.68%

Roenis Elias, what the heck are you doing? I guess since he’s been getting more called strikes in this waste zone than anyone else (more than twice as often as the next highest pitcher), perhaps he’s just really good at nibbling (note: not really). This does bring up a good question though, as to which pitchers are most effective at getting swings on these offerings.

Name	Pitches	Total Wasted	% Wasted	# Wasted Swings	% Wasted Swings	# Called Strikes	% Wasted Called Strike
Masahiro Tanaka	631	251	39.78%	94	37.45%	3	1.20%
Hisashi Iwakuma	3183	995	31.26%	295	29.65%	7	0.70%
Clayton Kershaw	3619	1306	36.09%	379	29.02%	41	3.14%
Felix Hernandez	3968	1382	34.83%	375	27.13%	19	1.37%
Eric Stults	3787	1341	35.41%	363	27.07%	5	0.37%
Homer Bailey	3996	1364	34.13%	368	26.98%	11	0.81%
Cole Hamels	3713	1195	32.18%	322	26.95%	6	0.50%
John Lackey	3583	1130	31.54%	302	26.73%	11	0.97%
Francisco Liriano	3109	1192	38.34%	313	26.26%	11	0.92%
Jose Fernandez	3316	1027	30.97%	269	26.19%	4	0.39%

As it turns out, your list of “guys with filthy stuff” appear here, as do a few somewhat surprising names and then Eric Stults. Note that the correlation between the percentage of pitches a pitcher wastes and the rate of swings he gets on them was weak (R-squared=0.036), so this isn’t necessarily a case of guys widening their target zone because they’ve had success in doing so.

On the flip side, there are a handful of names I suppose you could call “ineffectively wild,” pitchers who rarely coax swings when they miss or try and induce a flaccid swing.

Name	Pitches	Total Wasted	% Wasted	# Wasted Swings	% Wasted Swings	# Called Strikes	% Wasted Called Strike
Yovani Gallardo	3742	1454	38.86%	255	17.54%	14	0.96%
Jhoulys Chacin	3048	934	30.64%	164	17.56%	5	0.54%
Bartolo Colon	3449	922	26.73%	173	18.76%	11	1.19%
Mark Buehrle	3982	1352	33.95%	260	19.23%	19	1.41%
Ubaldo Jimenez	3795	1368	36.05%	264	19.30%	14	1.02%
Jeremy Guthrie	4104	1300	31.68%	251	19.31%	10	0.77%
Kyle Kendrick	3478	1166	33.53%	233	19.98%	14	1.20%
C.J. Wilson	4465	1619	36.26%	326	20.14%	8	0.49%
Gio Gonzalez	4008	1415	35.30%	285	20.14%	6	0.42%
Chris Tillman	4223	1463	34.64%	299	20.44%	21	1.44%

As for the hitters that swing at the most of these garbage pitches, well, I doubt many of the names will surprise you:

Player	Total Wasted	Swings	Wasted Swing %
A.J. Pierzynski	815	316	38.77%
Adam Jones	1135	409	36.04%
Evan Gattis	628	222	35.35%
Alfonso Soriano	1133	374	33.01%
Pablo Sandoval	1166	382	32.76%
Alexei Ramirez	877	285	32.50%
Wilin Rosario	676	216	31.95%
Nolan Arenado	797	253	31.74%
Erick Aybar	833	259	31.09%
Delmon Young	535	165	30.84%

I mean, is this really fair?