Orioles Pitching Dominating Rays Hitters

The Baltimore Orioles shut down the Tampa Bay Rays offense in their first matchup of the season, allowing 3 total runs, one in each game.  Here's a look at how the O's pitching staff located their pitches over the weekend:

Orioles Pitching (4/1-4/3) (Click to enlarge)

The Orioles effectively pitched lefties and righties away the whole series.  The result: Rays batters could barely muster any offense.

Rays vs. O's (4/1-4/3) (Click to enlarge)

Due to injury, Evan Longoria only batted six times the whole series, which certainly hurt the Rays offense.  A fairly potent Detroit Tigers offense comes to Baltimore today.  It will be the first test of the season for young righty Jake Arrieta, and another chance for the entire O's ballclub to show just how much they've improved this year.

Jackson on the Corners

Edwin Jackson pitched well in his first start for the White Sox this season.  He allowed just two earned runs over six innings, recording seven strikeouts.  Part of his success was avoiding the middle of the plate:

Edwin Jackson against the Indians, April 2, 2010.He kept the ball away from both lefties and righties:

Edwin Jackson against Indians left handed batters, April 2, 2010.Edwin Jackson against Indians right handed batters, April 2, 2010.Jackson did not pitch that well at the start of 2010 with the Diamondbacks.  When he came over to Chicago, he did a better job of keeping the ball down.  It's his pitches up that get him in trouble:

Edwin Jackson, In Play Average, 2010.If Jackson can combine his 2010 ability to keep the ball down with his 2011 start of keeping the ball on the corners, he could end up with a very successful season.

Marmol's Strikeouts

Carlos Marmol struck out all three batters he faced Saturday as he earned his first save of the season for the Cubs.  Among pitchers with 1000 batters faced since the start of the 2008 season, Marmol strikes out the highest percentage of batters, and it's not even close for second place.  The following table shows the top 20:

Pitcher	Plate App	K Per PA	BB Per PA	BABIP
Carlos Marmol	1026	0.339	0.154	0.238
Tim Lincecum	2905	0.277	0.083	0.301
Brandon Morrow	1207	0.262	0.119	0.300
Rich Harden	1655	0.26	0.117	0.277
Yovani Gallardo	1751	0.247	0.106	0.304
Ryan Madson	1010	0.246	0.067	0.311
Clayton Kershaw	2113	0.245	0.111	0.288
Jonathan Sanchez	2330	0.244	0.116	0.286
Max Scherzer	1778	0.239	0.087	0.307
Edinson Volquez	1369	0.237	0.12	0.296
Jake Peavy	1569	0.235	0.081	0.282
Justin Verlander	2812	0.234	0.08	0.303
Dan Haren	2811	0.232	0.047	0.298
Jon Lester	2740	0.231	0.081	0.298
Jorge De La Rosa	1882	0.231	0.106	0.308
Josh Johnson	1989	0.23	0.068	0.303
Javier Vazquez	2469	0.229	0.069	0.296
Joba Chamberlain	1479	0.229	0.095	0.323
Ricky Nolasco	2318	0.228	0.051	0.302
Zack Greinke	2685	0.226	0.06	0.308



The stats that really make Marmol interesting, however, are his high walk rate and his extremely low BABIP rate.  He walks batters 15.4% of the time, while the major league rate is 9.4%.  The walks don't hurt him however, since batters only hit .238 when they put the ball in play, while the major league average stands at .302.

The idea behind BABIP is that once a ball is put in play, the pitcher doesn't have much control over what happens.  The results of these batted balls should be random and dependent on the strength of the defense.  If you look at this group of high strikeout pitchers, the top 20 in K per PA since the start of the 2008 season, very few of them post a BABIP well over the league average.  It seems the same quality that make contact with the baseball difficult also leads to balls in play that are easier to field.  If a batter has difficulty making contact in the first place, he should have difficulty squaring up the ball in general.

Note that Marmol's BABIP probably isn't as good as shown here.  As a pitcher with both a high walk and strikeout rate, the balls in play against him represent a small sample size.  As time goes on, I suspect his BABIP will regress toward the league mean, but as long as his K rate remains high, he's likely to beat the MLB average.