There’s a great article over at The Hardball Times today. David Gassko (huh, I seem to link to his articles more than others) investigates a couple legends about groundball pitchers. His conclusions are somewhat surprising, but in that “well that does makes sense” sort of way.
One, groundball pitchers don’t give up more homeruns than the average pitcher when they do allow balls in the air (line drives and flyballs). They do, however, allow a disproportionately high number of line-drives.
Two, groundballs are much more likely to produce errors, and therefore groundball pitchers tend to give up more unearned runs than flyball pitchers. As lauding groundball pitchers is all the rage these days, this fact shows that maybe we’ve gone a little too far in that obsession.
Nicely done, David, and it’s worth checking out the details.
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Sky is a baseball fan and racket sport afficianado living in upstate NY. His favorite color is orange and is just about ready to give up on his life-long dream to become the next Magnus ver Magnuson (World's Strongest Man). His favorite baseball teams are the Yankees and Red Sox, proving that there's hope in the Middle East.