With growing amounts of data available to teams and to the public, many of the old-school approaches to baseball have been proven to be ineffective. Maybe they were never effective or maybe the game has developed to a point where a certain method has become outdated, but either way, we have a better idea of how different strategies affect performance on the field.
One of the many old-school strategies that you have likely heard about, and likely assumed was valuable, is wasting a pitch when there are no balls and two strikes. Because a pitcher has several balls to work with before walking a batter, many pitchers try to get the batter to chase a pitch far outside the zone. The thought process is that you do not want to make a mistake and throw a hittable pitch when you do not have to, so you might as well throw one out of the zone where the worst thing that can happen is the batter takes the pitch for a ball. Below you can see which zones baseballsavant considers to be a waste pitch and Brandon Woodruff’s pitch chart for waste pitches as an example.
(baseballsavant)
About 18% of 0-2 pitches are wasted. Using data from baseballsavant on all 0-2 pitches this season up to May 6, we can see that almost 90% of wasted pitches on 0-2 were balls, and 7% were swinging strikes. Only 0.5% were put in play.
Contrast this to the outcome of non-wasted pitches on 0-2 (shown below), and you can see the appeal of wasting a pitch. Although only a third of non-wasted pitches were balls (down from about 90% of wasted pitches), 20.5% were put in play. However, about 70% of those put in play resulted in outs and 21.7% were singles, so batters had little success with 0-2 pitches when put in play.
Another question emerged from these results: how does wasting a pitch on 0-2 affect the outcome of the plate appearance, not just the specific pitch? If wasting a pitch on 0-2 is an effective strategy, it should result in worse plate appearances.
The table below shows the likelihood of each plate appearance outcome in plate appearances that included a wasted pitch on 0-2 and those that did not, as well as a ratio comparing wasted to non-wasted. (The chart includes each plate appearance once, so that it does not count plate appearances with multiple 0-2 pitches more than once. Also, “reaches on” includes outcomes such as reaching on an error or fielder’s choice).
The table shows almost no change in the probability of a strikeout with it being about 50% whether or not there is a wasted pitch on 0-2 during the plate appearance. However, a pitcher is 2.5 times as likely to walk a batter if they waste an 0-2 pitch compared to not wasting an 0-2 pitch. This is likely the result of an almost guaranteed ball on 0-2.
The table also shows little change in the probability of a hit (single, double, triple, or home run). This is likely due to the fact that hitters typically do not hit well with two strikes whether or not there was a wasted pitch in the plate appearance. According to Fangraphs.com, MLB batters are slashing .163/.221/.257 with a 35 wRC+ with two strikes this season (not including 3-2 counts), and it gets marginally better as the count moves from 0-2 to 1-2 to 2-2. A plate appearance without an 0-2 wasted pitch is also more likely to end in a ground out, fly out, or pop out than one with an 0-2 wasted pitch.
A waste pitch is accurately named because it is usually a noncompetitive pitch that almost always results in a ball. A pitcher works hard to get ahead of a hitter 0-2, so it makes more sense to attack the hitter or try to get them to chase with a more enticing pitch out of the zone. It does not have to be in the strike zone, but a pitch should not be wasted. Trying too hard to limit a pitcher’s mistakes on 0-2 is not worth gifting a ball to batters.
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