August 10, 2010

Four Things You Did Not Know About Daisuke Matsuzaka

1. He has thrown a higher percentage of his pitches for strikes than Jon Lester.
             PIT    STR      %
Wakefield 1764 1162 65.873
Matsuzaka 1668 1057 63.369
Lester 2452 1533 62.520
Buchholz 1916 1194 62.317
Beckett 1226 761 62.071
Lackey 2506 1552 61.931
2. He gets ahead of batters 0-2 more often than any other starter.
             PA   0-2      %
Matsuzaka 416 108 25.961
Wakefield 499 125 25.050
Buchholz 490 118 24.081
Lester 629 149 23.688
Beckett 321 64 19.937
Lackey 652 128 19.631
3. He is second on the team in three-pitch strikeouts. He has 17, which is five fewer than Lester, but Lester has thrown 55.1 more innings.

4. His high pitch count this season is 112, the lowest among all starters not named Doubront or Atchison.

10 comments:

Aaron said...

Great post JOS.

laura k said...

Yes, excellent post. As you say in the Ground Rules: we like facts.

FenFan said...

Wow, awesome work! I second what Aaron and L-girl have already stated.

tim said...

Interesting. Swell post indeed.

allan said...

Shucks!

I sent the link to Pete Abraham, since he often uses stuff like this in his Game Posts.

He wondered "how many of those 0-2 counts ended up with a runner getting on base and what that percentage compares to other guys?"

Well, of the 108 0-2 counts, B-Ref says Dice threw a strike on 71 of them. But that must include foul balls, because he has only 19 K on 0-2 counts.

Batters are 5 for 50 against Dice on 0-2 counts. And 8 for 84 (with 3 BB) after the count is 0-2 (meaning it also includes 1-2 and 2-2).

As I told Pete, I would never have dreamed his strike % was so high. It certainly goes against what my eyes tell me.

Another reason why it's good that someone keeps track of these things, so we are not left having to trust someone who says "Dice must throw fewer strikes than anyone in baseball."

Rick (f/k/a westcoastsox) said...

Yeah, I liked this too. Wonder if he's leading the stat "Most 0-2 counts that turn into a 3-2 count"?

mattymatty said...

I saw the headline of the post and said to myself, "Self, I bet I know at least three of these." Nope, not a one. Good job, Red Sock.

allan said...

There were, of course, many other Dicetoids I found that would not have surprised you (lowest 1st pitch strike %, for example) ...

allan said...

How about this?

Papelbon has had more games this season in which he recorded more than 3 outs (7) than games with fewer than 3 outs (6).

johngoldfine said...

Oh well, if you're going to win arguments by cheating with facts and numbers....

Nice eye-opener, brain-expander post