Prospect Report:
K/9: Still Man's Best Friend?

David Cameron

I've received a great deal of feedback after last week's column, where I insinuated that a low minor-league strikeout rate doesn't necessarily foretell a lack of success in the majors. Your most common response dealt with the issue of sample size, since my "study" only analyzed 11 pitchers. The other point was that selecting pitchers on the basis of making one all-star team lends itself to including potential "one-year wonder" types in the equation, though I disagree with the assertion that any of the pitchers in last week's study fit that criteria.

This week, we'll take a little different angle on the same subject: how well do minor-league strikeout rates correlate to major-league level strikeouts? This time I gathered data from the top twenty currently active starting pitchers in strikeouts-per-nine-innings ratio. Only pitchers with more than 200 innings were included, so no Mark Priors or Josh Becketts. The list below is sorted by the difference between a pitcher's major league K/9 and minor league K/9.

The total above includes over 8,000 innings of minor-league ball, so the sample is sufficient for drawing real conclusions.

Six of the twenty pitchers saw improvements in their strikeout rates after reaching the major leagues, including three of the four active leaders in the category. Both Schilling and Smoltz were contact pitchers in the minor leagues, then became dominant starting pitchers later in their careers. Meanwhile, in a very brief trial of 61 innings, Chuck Finley looked like the second-coming of Cy Young before hitting Anaheim.

However, the trend is still rather obvious, in that over two-thirds of all pitchers saw their K/9 decline and nearly half saw it decline by a over a strikeout per nine innings. Guys like Al Leiter and Wade Miller remind us that it's foolish to completely dismiss players with average strikeout numbers, but they're also out of the norm. We shouldn't expect pitchers to miss more major-league bats than they've shown the ability to miss in the minors.

Of course, most of this is already common knowledge. To actually make use of this study, we need to find out if there is a way to isolate the Al Leiters of the world before they reach the major leagues. Next week, we'll delve into the possibility that there is a trait which might have indicated these pitchers would improve their numbers after promotion. If we can we find a common link that would allow us to predict which contact pitchers will become strikeout artists, we'll have actually developed something useful.

about the author

David Cameron wrote the preceding column as his Eastern-seaboard-area lights flickered. Offer him big ups (and by that we mean a large uninterruptible power supply) at dac@strikethree.com.

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