One of my favorite exercises when mining advanced metrics is to combine a few of my favorite pitching stats. The holy grail is a pitcher getting punch outs and inducing weak contact, preferably on the ground. Baseball savant is more customizable than ever. Head on over and poke your head under the hood of this leaderboard combining K%, Barrel%, and GB%.
Custom Pitching Leaderboard From Above (Sorted by K%)
Two of baseball’s best pitchers are right there at the top. Shane Bieber and Trevor Bauer have provided immense value for anyone with the foresight to draft them. Bauer has more swing and miss to his pitches. Bieber does much of his damage by setting his stuff up with elite control. That bears out in Bieber's elevated Barrel% and GB%.
Aaron Nola is looking more and more like the 2018 version of himself. He’s another control specialist that will wax hitters if they have to worry about striking out against him, as well.
Sonny Gray , Max Scherzer , and Jacob deGrom have some of the best breaking stuff in baseball. They’re no surprise here.
To pitch in Milwaukee you can’t let too many balls be put in play. Josh Lindblom and Corbin Burnes are missing plenty of bats. That’s good. It may not be good that they’re GB% are 30.8% and 35.7%. They’re two guys to keep an eye on.
A Brewer that is giving you the best of both worlds is Brandon Woodruff . A nasty fastball is his bread and butter. Inducing 58.5% ground balls is icing on the cake.
Luis Castillo ’s metrics check out. He might not quite have the results you were expecting when you drafted him but they’re very likely coming. He’s among the best in all three categories.
If Zac Gallen continues to perform like he has, the same way he did in his early 2019, then he’s an absolute buy. It’s possible he wore down as last season wound on. That’s natural for a rookie pitcher.