2009 MLB Strike % Leaders

In a post over the summer, I looked as to whether Joel Pineiro was getting lucky with his walks. His BB/9 at the time was astoundingly low (1.00), and I figured that it would go up based on his ball:strike ratio (it did, by 14%). This isn’t rocket science at all: Pineiro was maintaining a ridiculously low walk rate that resembled nothing of his skill set over his decently long career. However, it does let us look more closely at what I called EFF (for efficiency), which is basically how often a pitcher throws strikes relative to balls. So here are the 2009 Starting Pitcher leaders in the simple Strike %, which is simply just the percentage of strikes a pitcher throws out of all his pitches:

1) Johan Santana: 68.8
2) Roy Halladay: 68.6
3) Cliff Lee: 68.2
4) Ted Lilly: 68
5) Scott Baker: 67.7
6) Roy Oswalt: 67.7
7) Carl Pavano: 67.1
9) Justin Verlander: 66.9
10) Cole Hamels: 66.8

Bottom Five:

78) Trevor Cahill: 59
77) Yovani Gallardo: 59.2
76) Livan Hernandez: 59.8
75) Doug Davis: 60
74) Scott Feldman: 60.6

Attached is the excel file with all 78 names. Enjoy.

Thanks to Fangraphs for the data.

2009STRKEPRCNTGE.xls