The Best in 3-Ball Counts

Top 20 Pitchers by BB% in 3-Ball Counts (min. 75 PA)

Of course, simply limiting your walks with 3 balls is not an indication of success. You obviously want to avoid awarding free bases to batters, but you also don't want to do so at the expense of grooving pitches either. You can see that both Lee and Halladay were able to limit their opponents to around a .200 batting average (also around .300 slugging percentage for both) with three ball counts in 2010. Of course, they were just as successful when pitching with two strikes (Lee .220 SLG%, Halladay .243 SLG%, both w/ .161 BA). Conclusion: working the count on these Philly aces doesn't seem to do much good.