Monday Rockpile: K/100 Pitches and the Rockies

since he didn’t reach 100 IP.

But you’re missing the point here. He’s not saying that Smith and Marquis were as good as Cook was last season. If you charted out every pitcher on a graph, Cook would be in the “low K, high groundball rate” quadrant. It’s really a combination of his groundball rate and increased K/100P (if you follow this line of thinking) that led to Cook’s season. Smith and Marquis don’t have comparable groundball rates to Cook’s. Combined with their low K/100P (again, if you follow this line of thinking), Smith and Marquis were nowhere as good as Cook.

It’s not completely ridiculous, although the reasoning behind it is somewhat difficult to follow. The purpose is to identify the pitchers who are best at throwing and missing bats. The idea is that there are two better ways to measure a pitcher by strikeouts than K/9:

1)K/BF (batters faced) and K/100P. K/BF filters out, by identifying efficiency , pitchers who allow a lot of walks, hits, and HPB.

2) K/100P identifies those who don’t allow BB, H, or HBP, as well as those who throw the least pitches per strikeout (the idea being that, during a game, a pitcher who can strikeout batters on 3 pitches is going to record outs more quickly and pitch deeper into games). Read this column from 2006:

Just as striking out the side in order is preferred over getting all three outs via the K regardless of the number of batters faced, a pitcher who strikes out hitters on three pitches is more effective than those who take five or six to get the job done. By definition, he is missing bats a higher percentage of the time and is also more likely to pitch deeper into games and record a greater number of outs than his counterparts.

Once the reasoning behind the stat is understood, it’s relatively simple math (say, compared to the defensive +/- rankings). It’s not identifying the most successful pitchers by ERA or W/L, it’s showing the pitcher who is best at missing bats and getting outs quickly without needing his defense, with the understanding that this is the most efficient way to prevent baserunners and runs scored. Cook is not a strikeout pitcher, but does a good job of getting outs by way of his prowess for groundballs and his defense. His success will always vary based on the quality of defense behind him. Joe Saunders, Jamie Moyer and John Lannan are others that had good years and are far down on the list.

If I had to face a lineup of Pat Burrell, Jack Cust, Adam Dunn, Chris Iannetta, Brad Hawpe, Ryan Howard, Carlos Pena, Jim Thome, and Jeremy Hermida, then yeah, I’ll get my strikeouts, but it’ll be on like 6 or 7 pitches.

Now if it was a lineup of Carlos Gomez, Matt Kemp, Dan Uggla, Mark Reynolds, Chris Young, Kevin Kouzmanoff, Ryan Braun, Jhonny Peralta, and Bill Hall, I might be more prone to getting them in that 3 or 4 pitch window.