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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

Star-divide

         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
in a rare positive piece.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2006/02/21/SPG3BHBV651.DTL

It's actually a pretty good article.

Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other third is covered by Kotsay.

by carp on Feb 21, 2006 8:27 AM PST reply actions  

Yeah, I liked it too
But I still feel kind of dirty for praising Ratto.
"Put a Milo on him." -Billy Beane

by kaweahkaweah on Feb 21, 2006 8:30 AM PST up reply actions  

The perfect pitcher
Groundballs lead to errors, I'll take the 91 pitch 27 strikeout guy, and then we can have a a defense off all Frank Thomas, Matt Stairs types and slug for the fences!
"If you throw at someone's head, it's very dangerous, because in the head is the brain." -- Pudge Rodriguez

by niallmack on Feb 21, 2006 9:29 AM PST reply actions  

oops, bad math
I meant to do 27*3, and of course, it is 81 not 91.

by hedgehog on Feb 21, 2006 9:31 AM PST up reply actions  

grounballs are harder to hit for
extra bases. so i'd rather have a guy like Carlos Silva on the twins, who throws very few pitches and gets Gb's at a rate more than double the league average, than a guy like 2005 randy jonshon, who struck out guys but gave up 35 HR's

by harendaman365 on Feb 22, 2006 8:24 AM PST up reply actions  

Yabu
Can we include last year's staff?  
"I'd like to be cowboys from Texas or pimps from Oakland but it's not Halloween!" -John Beckwith

by ohtobe21likehuston on Feb 21, 2006 9:30 AM PST reply actions  

others
starters were pretty ugly, especially Saarloos.  Joe Kennedy is about a shade below staff average, at 4.5K/100P.  Yabu?  Who's Yabu?  But in all seriousness, I didn't do it for the relievers since they are a different breed.

by hedgehog on Feb 21, 2006 9:37 AM PST up reply actions  

Haren
Independent of Ratto's article I really do believe Haren has the most upside with his downward movement.  The guy would get in a zone at times last year that reminded me of Sir Richard.

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.

"I'd like to be cowboys from Texas or pimps from Oakland but it's not Halloween!" -John Beckwith

by ohtobe21likehuston on Feb 21, 2006 9:44 AM PST up reply actions  

One note:
It seems to be that home field can affect the "K/pitches" ratio. Every foul pop-up that stays in play at the Coliseum robs the pitcher of the chance for a strikeout--and had the ball had gone out of play, we know the hitter would have had at least one strike on him...

by Nico on Feb 21, 2006 5:41 PM PST reply actions  

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