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.