Where Balls in Play are Allowed, and What it Doesn’t Mean

As much as we’ve all grown accustomed to citing FIP, and trusting FIP, the theory is always kind of staggering at first, no matter who you are or what your background. The principle is that pitchers have little control over the results of their balls in play allowed. The evidence is convincing and exhausting. And it’s so challenging to come to terms with, because it flies in the face of what people are taught playing baseball growing up, and because different pitchers have different abilities to put the pitches where they want. How could location possibly be that unimportant, at least in that one particular regard? Don’t some spots lead to worse contact than others? Can’t some guys throw more pitches to those very spots?

Some people are still working on the investigation, and of course we know that BABIP isn’t completely random. For example, there’s the meaningful difference between groundball pitchers and fly-ball pitchers. But the general conclusion’s still valid. It never stops being a little weird when you stop and think about it, and what’s presented below contributes to the weirdness.

We have lots of information on which guys induce swings at pitches out of the zone, and which guys don’t. It’s good to get swings at pitches out of the zone, because those swings are less likely to lead to contact. They’re also less likely to lead to damaging hits and home runs, because the strike zone covers most hitters’ sweet spots. As a pitcher, you want to be able to trick the hitter into chasing something in or out or high or low. Do that often enough and you’re cut out for the major leagues, probably.

We also have information on out-of-zone contact rates. Those numbers get cited somewhat frequently. What I don’t read much about, however, is the location of pitches hit and hit fair. It can be as simple as a percent of balls in play that were hit on pitches in the zone. I thought I’d dive in for a quick examination, just to see what might turn up. My first thought was that pitchers who allowed more fair balls on pitches in the zone would allow higher BABIPs, because those pitches are more hittable. Allow more fair balls on pitches out of the zone, and those probably get weaker contact, and those probably lead to fewer hits. It sounded good enough to me.

In generating data, I turned to Baseball Savant, and looked at all pitchers who threw at least 1,500 pitches last season. This yielded a sample of 151. I figured out how many fair balls each allowed on pitches out of the zone, and then on pitches in the zone, and then I generated this long and really easy table. I figured showing the whole list would be better than just showing ten players at either end. From Samuel Deduno to Jered Weaver, here are the 2013 results:

Place	Player	%IZ	%OOZ
1	Samuel Deduno	81%	19%
2	Nathan Eovaldi	77%	23%
3	Chad Gaudin	76%	24%
4	Felix Doubront	75%	25%
5	Derek Holland	74%	26%
6	Cliff Lee	74%	26%
7	A.J. Burnett	74%	26%
8	Madison Bumgarner	74%	26%
9	Tyson Ross	74%	26%
10	Shelby Miller	73%	27%
11	Tony Cingrani	73%	27%
12	Jon Niese	73%	27%
13	Jose Fernandez	73%	27%
14	Matt Cain	73%	27%
15	Garrett Richards	72%	28%
16	Justin Grimm	72%	28%
17	Corey Kluber	72%	28%
18	Jordan Zimmermann	72%	28%
19	Tyler Chatwood	72%	28%
20	Stephen Strasburg	72%	28%
21	Phil Hughes	72%	28%
22	Ervin Santana	72%	28%
23	Ubaldo Jimenez	72%	28%
24	Tom Koehler	72%	28%
25	Bud Norris	71%	29%
26	Patrick Corbin	71%	29%
27	Jhoulys Chacin	71%	29%
28	Edinson Volquez	71%	29%
29	Justin Masterson	71%	29%
30	Scott Diamond	71%	29%
31	CC Sabathia	71%	29%
32	Trevor Cahill	71%	29%
33	Tim Hudson	71%	29%
34	Nick Tepesch	71%	29%
35	Clayton Kershaw	71%	29%
36	R.A. Dickey	71%	29%
37	Jorge De La Rosa	70%	30%
38	Matt Moore	70%	30%
39	C.J. Wilson	70%	30%
40	Bartolo Colon	70%	30%
41	Roberto Hernandez	70%	30%
42	Martin Perez	70%	30%
43	Charlie Morton	70%	30%
44	Mike Leake	70%	30%
45	Juan Nicasio	70%	30%
46	Paul Maholm	70%	30%
47	Josh Collmenter	70%	30%
48	Tim Lincecum	70%	30%
49	Yovani Gallardo	70%	30%
50	Jason Hammel	70%	30%
51	Jose Quintana	70%	30%
52	Erik Bedard	70%	30%
53	Felix Hernandez	70%	30%
54	Jacob Turner	69%	31%
55	Aaron Harang	69%	31%
56	Wade Miley	69%	31%
57	Matt Garza	69%	31%
58	Kris Medlen	69%	31%
59	Edwin Jackson	69%	31%
60	Matt Harvey	69%	31%
61	Anibal Sanchez	69%	31%
62	David Price	69%	31%
63	Alexi Ogando	69%	31%
64	Jeremy Guthrie	69%	31%
65	James Shields	69%	31%
66	Dan Haren	69%	31%
67	John Lackey	69%	31%
68	Dylan Axelrod	69%	31%
69	Yu Darvish	69%	31%
70	Marco Estrada	69%	31%
71	Scott Feldman	69%	31%
72	Jon Lester	69%	31%
73	Jeff Samardzija	69%	31%
74	Carlos Villanueva	69%	31%
75	Chris Sale	68%	32%
76	Jake Peavy	68%	32%
77	Brandon McCarthy	68%	32%
78	Jake Westbrook	68%	32%
79	Bronson Arroyo	68%	32%
80	Dan Straily	68%	32%
81	Julio Teheran	68%	32%
82	Travis Wood	68%	32%
83	Lance Lynn	68%	32%
84	Zack Wheeler	68%	32%
85	Mike Minor	68%	32%
86	Chris Capuano	68%	32%
87	Hisashi Iwakuma	68%	32%
88	Scott Kazmir	68%	32%
89	Kevin Correia	68%	32%
90	Andrew Cashner	68%	32%
91	Zach McAllister	68%	32%
92	Wade Davis	68%	33%
93	Dallas Keuchel	67%	33%
94	Hector Santiago	67%	33%
95	Mat Latos	67%	33%
96	Jonathan Pettibone	67%	33%
97	Michael Wacha	67%	33%
98	Jeremy Hefner	67%	33%
99	Andy Pettitte	67%	33%
100	Jarrod Parker	67%	33%
101	Ricky Nolasco	67%	33%
102	Wily Peralta	67%	33%
103	Jeff Locke	67%	33%
104	Adam Wainwright	66%	34%
105	Homer Bailey	66%	34%
106	Joe Saunders	66%	34%
107	Dillon Gee	66%	34%
108	Chris Tillman	66%	34%
109	Rick Porcello	66%	34%
110	Kyle Lohse	66%	34%
111	Gerrit Cole	66%	34%
112	Tommy Milone	66%	34%
113	John Danks	66%	34%
114	Chris Archer	66%	34%
115	J.A. Happ	66%	34%
116	Wei-Yin Chen	66%	34%
117	Francisco Liriano	66%	34%
118	Cole Hamels	66%	34%
119	Ian Kennedy	65%	35%
120	Luis Mendoza	65%	35%
121	A.J. Griffin	65%	35%
122	Joe Kelly	65%	35%
123	Bruce Chen	65%	35%
124	Esmil Rogers	65%	35%
125	Jerome Williams	65%	35%
126	Joe Blanton	65%	35%
127	Jason Marquis	65%	35%
128	Mike Pelfrey	65%	35%
129	Max Scherzer	64%	36%
130	Zack Greinke	64%	36%
131	Hyun-Jin Ryu	64%	36%
132	Gio Gonzalez	64%	36%
133	Alex Cobb	64%	36%
134	Barry Zito	64%	36%
135	Miguel Gonzalez	64%	36%
136	Clay Buchholz	63%	37%
137	Ryan Vogelsong	63%	37%
138	Kyle Kendrick	63%	37%
139	Jeremy Hellickson	63%	37%
140	Justin Verlander	62%	38%
141	Ryan Dempster	62%	38%
142	Jordan Lyles	62%	38%
143	Randall Delgado	62%	38%
144	Jason Vargas	62%	38%
145	Doug Fister	60%	40%
146	Hiroki Kuroda	60%	40%
147	Mark Buehrle	59%	41%
148	Ivan Nova	58%	42%
149	Lucas Harrell	57%	43%
150	Eric Stults	57%	43%
151	Jered Weaver	57%	43%

According to the numbers, Deduno allowed 344 fair hit balls, and 279 of those hit pitches within the strike zone. At the other end, Weaver allowed 471 fair hit balls, and 268 of those hit pitches within the strike zone. Intuitively, it’s not surprising to see a command guy like Weaver in that position, nor is it surprising to think that hitters might’ve forced a guy like Deduno to throw more over the plate. In terms of in-zone rate, Weaver finished 2.9 standard deviations below the mean. Deduno, meanwhile, finished 3.4 standard deviations above it. Here’s a comparative chart, showing the locations of pitches hit fair for both guys:

This, like usual, is from the catcher’s perspective,and for Weaver you see a lot of balls hit fair on pitches off the plate to the left. Deduno is mostly collected in the middle. This is just a graphical representation of the numbers that looked so different above, and if this is all you knew, you’d think, all right, Weaver was a lot better, then. He probably allowed fewer hits, and fewer damaging hits.

And it’s true that Weaver allowed a .268 BABIP, while Deduno came in at .291. But then, hitters slugged .382 against Weaver, and .375 against Deduno. The four guys right above Weaver at the bottom of the table allowed BABIPs over .300. The top ten pitchers in the table allowed an average .288 BABIP. The bottom ten pitchers in the table allowed an average .300 BABIP. There’s barely any correlation between IZ% and BABIP, and what correlation there is is slightly negative. In two ways, that’s the opposite of what one might’ve expected.

You’d think a pitcher would be better off getting more balls in play on pitches off the plate, relatively speaking. That doesn’t actually seem to hold true in the majors. Maybe it does hold true at other levels, but I suspect the majors are selective for pitchers who are successful however they are, and if you’re a guy who allows balls in play on pitches in the zone, then to cut it in the bigs you have to demonstrate some ability to keep those hit balls from hurting too bad. Not all pitches in the zone hit fair are created alike. Nor are all pitches out of the zone hit fair created alike. It turns out that this, like everything, is complicated, yielding results that demand further and closer attention. Follow-up studies. The whole enchilada.

It could be that guys toward the bottom throw more hittable pitches out of the zone than guys toward the top. The bottom ten averaged an O-Contact% of 68%. The top ten averaged an O-Contact% of 60%, and the correlation between O-Contact% and IZ% comes out to about 0.3. Then there are going to be other factors as well, because there always are, in greater number than one could ever imagine. I’m sure you’ve thought of a few. I’m still thinking of more, but I don’t want this post to meander.

Up there: results. They’re not what I expected, and for me, that makes them interesting. Four of five balls hit fair against Samuel Deduno were on pitches in the zone. Four of seven balls hit fair against Jered Weaver were on pitches in the zone. Batters posted a higher slugging percentage against Weaver than against Deduno. There’s no meaningful correlation between IZ% and BABIP. Nobody needed more evidence that there are several different ways to be successful in the majors, but you can throw this on the pile anyway. Don’t stand too close to the pile, for your own safety.