Dice Throws Strikes. It Is A Fact.

A reader named Amanda emailed:

Peter Abraham said today: "Watching Dice-K pitch is painful. He's not willing to throw strikes."

I thought I read somewhere on your site where dicek actually wasn't as bad as other pitchers on the sox staff (strikes/balls).

I did post about that, back on August 10. Among the facts I passed along were, as of that point in the season, Matsuzaka has thrown a higher percentage of his pitches for strikes than every other Red Sox starting pitcher except Tim Wakefield. Matsuzaka also got ahead of batters 0-2 more often than any other Boston starter.

Looking through the comments to that post, I see that I sent the URL to Abraham (thinking he might want to cite it in a pre-game blog post) and he and I emailed back and forth a little bit. So Abraham is (or was, in August) aware of the facts -- yet he still insists that Matsuzaka is "not willing to throw strikes".

Here are the complete 2010 totals:

Percentage Of Pitches Thrown For Strikes:

             PIT    STR      %
Wakefield   2150   1441   67.023
Lackey      3584   2264   63.170
Matsuzaka   2611   1645   63.003
Beckett     2166   1343   62.004
Buchholz    2798   1731   61.866
Lester      3356   2067   61.591

Percentage Of 0-2 Counts

             PA   0-2      %
Wakefield   610   164   26.885
Matsuzaka   664   169   25.452
Buchholz    711   168   23.629
Lester      861   195   22.648
Beckett     577   115   19.931
Lackey      930   205   19.631

Don't you hate it when Matsuzaka goes to a 3-0 count on opposing batters? Well, in 2010, Lester did it more often.

             PA   3-0     %
Lester      861    42   4.878
Matsuzaka   664    31   4.669

(Note: While Lester issued 13 four-pitch walks and Matsuzaka handed out 12, Lester also faced almost 200 more batters. So, thumbs down to Dice for that.)

Lester led the staff with 30 three-pitch strikeouts, but Dice was a close second with 27. Wakefield had 23, Beckett had 18, and Lackey and Buchholz each had 13.

Clay Buchholz led the starters with the most pitches per batter:

             PA   PIT   P/PA%
Buchholz    711   2798  3.935
Matsuzaka   664   2611  3.932
Lester      861   3356  3.898

I have no problem with Abraham writing "Watching Dice-K pitch is painful". That is his opinion, and on some nights, I wholeheartedly agree. However, when Abraham states "He's not willing to throw strikes", he does not have the facts on his side.