Zack Greinke Threw Strikes Last Night

 We all know the maxims that tell us the importance of throwing strikes for pitchers--"What's the best pitch for a pitcher to throw? Strike one." "Leadoff walks always seem to score," and the ever-popular "Throw strikes."

Last night in Oakland, Zach Greinke threw strikes. Of the 89 pitches that he threw in his 8 innings of work, 63 were strikes. That's a 71% strike rate, the highest of the season for Greinke. Greinke allowed only 1 walk and 4 hits in an efficient performance. 

Greinke was intense on the mound last night. 

Greinke has had an up-and-down season, with great inconsistency between starts. Greinke has had 4 blow-up starts, where he has pitched fewer than 5 winnings. In those starts, he has given up 17 earned runs in 16 2/3 IP for a 9.18 ERA. He has allowed 26 hits, 9 walks, and 6 homers.

This contrasts with the six very good starts that we have seen from Greinke. In these starts, Greinke has thrown 43 innings (7.2 innings per start). and allwed 8 earned runs (1.67 ERA), 2 walks, and 33 hits, while striking out 33. 

What's the difference between good Greinke and bad Greinke this season?  It the ability to throw strikes. Greinke has thrown 915 pitches so far this season, and 587 of them for strikes. So he throws 64% of his pitches for strikes. In his six good starts, he has thrown between 63 and 71% of his pitches for strikes. In those 4 bad starts, Greinke has thrown between 54 and 65% of his pitches for strikes. The relationship is not one-ot-one, but the correlation is strong. When Greinke throws strikes, he pitches well. 

To show this another way, I created the scatterplot at the right. The left-to-right axis is the percent of strikes that Greinke has thrown in each start. The up-and-down axis is the Greinke's 'Game Score." Game Score is a measure created by Bill James that measures the quality of each start, as pitchers gain points for outs and strikeouts, and lose them for allowing baserunners and runs. The scale usually runs from 0 to 100, with 50 as average. 

The scatterplot shows a pretty strong relationship. The more strikes that Greinke throws, the better his game score it. The relationship is not perfect--Greinke's lowest game score is 19, but he threw 62% of his pitches for strikes. Of course, once could argue that Greinke threw too many strikes that night against Detroit, they founded out 10 hits including 3 homers.

But broadly speaking, the pattern holds. The more strikes he throws, the better he pitches.

Last night in Oakland, much was made of Greinke's increase.in velocity. But to me, the biggest explanation for Greinke having his best outing of the season was his increase in strikes. 

Hmm, Greinke threw his highest share of strikes last night. And tt was his best start of the season. This is not a coincidence.