How To: Keep Pitch Counts Down

Pitch to contact of course, right? Wrong. Courtesy of the folks (Dan Novick in particular) at Statistically Speaking, pitching to contact does not keep a pitch count lower:

Thanks to the work of Tom Tango, it has been shown that the average strikeout requires 4.8 pitches, the average walk takes 5.5 pitches, and if the plate appearance results in batter contact then it takes an average of 3.3 pitches [...]

Here's an extreme example: Take the exact pitching line from above, but change strikeouts from 6 to 27. So the new pitching line is 9 IP, 27 strikeouts, 4 BB, 1 HR. Using the formula above, the pitcher would be expected to throw 154.9 pitches. The effect is actually smaller than that, and here's why: If a pitcher strikes out 27 batters, would you really expect the ONLY guy to make contact to hit the ball over the fence? When a pitcher is that dominating, what are the chances that he'd give up a home run at a rate of one per 9 innings? I'd say very slim. Fewer balls in play means fewer fly balls, which in turn means fewer home runs, and fewer pitches. So the real pitch count would be lower than 154.9, but for simplicity's sake I'm going to call it even.

Let's look at the other extreme--a pitcher who doesn't strike out a single batter all game. Such a pitcher would be expected to allow a little over 12 hits per game. His expected pitch count for a game that included 4 walks, no strikeouts, and 12 hits including one home run would be 151.2 pitches. The caveat above about home runs also applies here, but in the opposite direction--a pitcher who has ever batter put the ball in play on him would likely allow more than one home run per 9 innings, so he'd likely throw slightly more than 151.2 pitches.

So what did we learn from this exercise? Even in the most extreme cases, striking out lots of batters will not increase your pitch count by any noticeable effect. Even when comparing two pitchers with polar opposite strikeout tendencies, the difference comes out to fewer than four pitches per 9 innings, with the real-life effect likely being even smaller than that due to the home run issue mentioned above. Next time you hear someone saying that a pitcher needs to "pitch to contact" in order to decrease his pitch count, you'll know that it makes no difference.

It seems like such common sense that striking out hitters causes more pitches but rather than fight it and say there is no way, color me convinced. There are several baseball adages that people are seemingly afraid sabermetrics will ruin, people remain eternally unconvinced of the science behind the numbers (even if they are pretty darn simple you still get outcries as startling as this). Funny thing is that often the math backs up what we all previously thought, this however is not one of those things.

A guy like Clayton Kershaw has a ton of talent including one that helps him strike out a lot of guys. Alas, he throws too many pitches to go deep into games. Surprise surprise! People think he should pitch more to contact, obviously now we can say that is a stupid idea. Kershaw just needs to pitch...well, better. There is a difference between striking guys out, and simply not having any control. Pitching to contact won't help that problem, it will just create a lot of RBI singles driving in the 2 guys you walked to start the inning.

On a personal note I found this article quite funny because of my 'Road to the Show' in the MLB the Show video game. I created a pitcher, Matt Vegas, and when I'm pitching I sometimes try to pitch to contact so I can get into the 7th and 8th innings (your stamina doesn't start off that high), and when I do that I often just give up more singles and doubles and get taken out earlier. Talk about a realistic video game! Expect Matt Vegas' strikeout rates to now increase in the future with no ill effects to his stamina.