Who's the 2nd most dominant pitcher on the A's?
I think almost everyone believes the most dominant pitcher on the A's is Rich Harden, but who's 2nd? Rich Lederer of baseballanalysts.com came up with a new metric to assess pitcher dominance. It's so simple yet elegant and intuitive, I'm surprised I haven't thought about this before. It's K per 100 pitches. It has a higher correlation of defense independent pitching than either K/9IP or K/batter faces. This metric obviously favors power pitcher rather than pitch count efficient, contact pitcher. I know in the dream world the best pitcher is someone who throws 27 pitches and induces 27 ground balls and get 27 outs, and not someone who throws 91 pitches and get 27 strike outs. In reality, most would take a K pitcher over a groundball pitcher.
And the 2nd place winner is...
Loiaza.
Here's the list of ratios:
K/9IP K/27BF K/100P
Harden 8.51 6.36 6.17
Loiaza 7.18 5.12 5.18
Haren 6.76 4.91 4.84
Zito 6.74 4.84 4.49
Blanton 5.19 3.75 3.78
I admit that I was hugely disappointed and skeptical about Loiaza's signing, but maybe there is so method to this madness. And remember, this should have nothing to do with the pitcher's park that he pitched in last year.
Also, one should note Loiaza is quite efficient. His K/100P is actually higher than K/27BF which meant he used less than 100 pitches on average to face 27 batters. Only Joe could say the same thing, but he hasn't developed the strike out capability yet.
In case anyone cares, the projected Angles' rotation is around the turn

K/9IP K/27BF K/100P
Colon 6.32 4.68 4.84
Lackey 8.57 6.02 5.70
Byrd 4.49 3.27 3.49
Escobar 9.35 7.03 7.05
Santana 6.62 4.58 4.39
Escobar was injured mostly and used frequently in relief. But overall, the Angles' staff is comparable if not slightly better. But I expect Escobar and Lackey to regress.
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Ratto ways in on Haren
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/21/SPG3BHBV651.DTL
It's actually a pretty good article.
by carp on
Feb 21, 2006 8:27 AM PST
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Yeah, I liked it too
by kaweahkaweah on
Feb 21, 2006 8:30 AM PST
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The perfect pitcher
by niallmack on
Feb 21, 2006 9:29 AM PST
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oops, bad math
by hedgehog on
Feb 21, 2006 9:31 AM PST
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grounballs are harder to hit for
by harendaman365 on
Feb 22, 2006 8:24 AM PST
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Yabu
by ohtobe21likehuston on
Feb 21, 2006 9:30 AM PST
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others
by hedgehog on
Feb 21, 2006 9:37 AM PST
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Haren
Saarloos likely overachieved last year and I'm just happy BB went out and got a more proven entity to round out our starting five.
by ohtobe21likehuston on
Feb 21, 2006 9:44 AM PST
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One note:
by Nico on
Feb 21, 2006 5:41 PM PST
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im partial, but
by harendaman365 on
Feb 22, 2006 8:21 AM PST
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