The Power of the Groundball

Brett astutely comments on my analysis of Jose Contreras (and, in fact, trumps it), but of course his comment got me ruminating on something else entirely.

This is the list of pitchers with the highest G/F rates in the majors to date this year (40 IP or more).

I've always been fascinated by groundball pitchers, since a guy who keeps the ball on the ground is typically going to allow fewer balls to leave the yard and more likely to get the double play. It isn't automatic, of course. It doesn't do much good if those grounders find a hole, or if the range of the defense behind the pitcher is suspect, or if those grounders are getting hit hard. But, generally speaking, I'd rather have a pitcher who makes them pound the ball into the dirt than makes them hit the ball into the air.

The evidence from last year, though, doesn't make a stellar case for targeting these guys. Brandon Webb and Fausto Carmona were the most successful of the group, but Webb is a pretty special pitcher who has enough gas to strike some guys out as well. Sergio Mitre's ERA looks like it was a product of bad luck, but with a 4.83 K/9, it wasn't exactly a shock to see his final numbers look as poor as they did.

I always think about Jake Westbrook when I think about some of the pratfalls of these types of pitchers. Westbrook has always generated a lot of grounders, but his pitches aren't necessarily hard to hit, even if it's hard to get lift on them. If you've watched Westbrook pitch, you'll see him have innings where he'll give up a string of doubles and singles on some pretty flat pitches in the zone. Keeping the ball from leaving the yard is certainly important. But it isn't everything.

There's typically a ceiling for guys who get a lot of outs on the ground but don't get a lot of whiffs. Chien-Ming Wang feels like he's right at that ceiling, or pretty close to it, even though he's a better pitcher than Westbrook. Wang has better movement within the zone, but even he's susceptible to getting hit.

So grounders are good but not everything. I still look for these pitchers, but I'm wary that this one feat is an automatic formula for success. If I own a guy like Contreras or Aaron Laffey, I know that there's a ceiling, and these guys have soared well past it. Whether you're a groundball pitcher or a flyball pitcher, a certain regression to the mean must be expected when you're not striking a lot of guys out.