The local example is important. You’re certainly right that ending the inning with GIDP is better than a strike out. But the question is whether the pitcher has much control over that outcome. The received view is that a pitcher effects Ks and BBs to a high degree, some has some control over whether batted balls are GB or ball in the air, and little control over the rest. If that’s right (and it has some pretty good evidence going for it), there’s probably not much a pitcher can do to induce GIDP over and above his ability to produce a GB. Even the best GB pitchers can’t induce GB on more than about 65% of batted balls, so that suggests a pretty small ability to produce GIDP.

The pitcher one is not actually listed, but it followed the same pattern– when I regressed strikeout rate on the previous year’s strikeout rate and the previous year’s contact% (as listed by fangraphs), the contact rate out significant and predictably so– less contact (and more swings and misses) meant that the pitcher was likely to strikeout more people the following year than the earlier year’s strikeout rate would predict alone. However, a second year of strikeout data left contact% very statistically insignificant. Have a look at the article.

http://statspeak.net/2009/03/skills-repeatability-and-peripherals.html

That’s not to downplay this article– to the contrary, it’s to focus where it’s useful and that is looking at young players. The old ones have enough data that a noisy signal of skill won’t help.

In particular, called strike % on breaking balls probably correlates to strikeouts. How many times have you seen a batter freeze only to see the curve drop straight through the strike zone? It would really surprise me if good pitchers don’t get more called strikes.

The outcome of a swinging strike and a called strike are exactly the same all the time. The only reason I could see any difference between the two is if most strikeouts ended with a disproportionately high amount of swinging strikes. It would be interesting if this was the case. That could also explain the very high correlation.

Maybe John could give us a breakdown by pitch type and sequence, although the .000 wOBA does not look promising.

Out of curiosity I grabbed all pitchers with 15 or more starts last season and took a look at swinging strike rates and looking strike rates in a pretty simple way:
The average called strike rate was 17.9% with a maximum value of 25.3% and minimum of 14.5% (range of 10.8) and a standard deviation of 1.6.

The average swinging strike rate was 8.4% with a max of 15.1% and minimum of 3.7% (range 11.4) and standard deviation of 1.9.

There’s greater dispersion in swinging strike rates. This suggests that it’s an ability a pitcher has more ability to control, which one might speculate is true from the get go: a pitcher can only throw so many strikes in the zone that batters don’t swing at.

Thanks for the link to the Walsh article. that was nice stuff.