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| quote: | Originally posted by kid nyce
what good is a pitcher if he can't rely on the other 8 players on the field? same goes for what good is the pitcher if the other 8 can't rely on him to throw strikes. would you rather have a walk-athon then dunkers and errors? i'd always would want to the ball in play then say giving up the free pass...ball in play means the pitcher is throwing strikes...of course we'd all love to have a pitcher burning the mit and blowing holes through swings, fact is those are the pitchers that tend to get hit the hardest because hitters don't need to swing with power they just need to make contact...
where as a less of a threat pitcher can craftly place pitches that induce ground balls, a fire arm usually means either he's hitting the zone with heat, the balls traveling out of the park with heat, or it's a walk-athon. more controlled pitching less strike out power more groundball power means the pitchers arm can last longer, he's effective in shutting down an offense by making the offense get themselves out.
i didn't pitch the anywhere near those league levels just in my mind i'd rather throw a groundball then say chance a strikeout versus a walk or homerun...granted as you go up in those leagues hitters are more patient and selective that doesn't mean a sinker down or a cutter in inducing a groundball isn't as good as continuous heat |
This is almost pointless because you don't see the value of stats(quantative proof), but the statistics(evidence), going back to when stats were first kept, prove that guys with crappy k ratios have far less success than guys who have at least a 5,6 k/9 ratio. And like the poster above stated, you don't need to throw hard to strike people out. Any ball put in play has an extremely higher likely hood of NOT being an out because that's the nature of balls put in play. K's lower the probabilty of a hit to zero. Higher K's also don't translate into higher walk totals either. But again... we can't get into that b/c I'm not going to throw stats(proof) at you.
BTW just to touch on the stat nerd point you brought up before... I have no aspirations to get into that field at all as I have a career I enjoy, but a couple of stat nerds out there would be guys like Billy Beane, BRIAN CASHMAN, theo epstein, Paul Depodesta, JP ricciardi, and an increasing number of successful baseball GMs who understand their value... Just take a look sometime, you'll see what we mean... 
Last edited by chanman7483 on Feb-08-2007 at 04:17
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