[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I guess it depends on what you consider skill. Is it a skill to cause more ground balls than fly balls, or is it simply a preference? Some pitchers feel more comfortable throwing lower in the zone. As I said, there is a tradeoff between ground and fly ball pitchers. My understanding is that one isn't "better" than the other. Here's an article from fangraphs.com that discusses the topic.

https://library.fangraphs.com/which-...-ball-pitcher/

Along the lines of what I was talking about earlier; I mentioned that Maddux probably traded in a lower slugging percentage against for a higher batting average against. You could look up more pitchers than this of course, but a simple comparison of Maddux's numbers vs Randy's numbers certainly shows this tradeoff.

Randy Johnson
0.221 AVG, 0.353 SLG, 2.4% HR

Greg Maddux
0.250 AVG, 0.358 SLG, 1.7% HR

As you can see, they had very similar slugging percentages, with Randy's being 5 points lower despite him giving up 40% more HRs, but Maddux's batting average against is much higher than Randy's. There is a tradeoff happening here. It's a difference of approach. Throwing more ground ball pitches is going to net you more singles against than fly ball pitches, but fewer 2B, 3B, and HR.

All things being equal, fewer extra base hits in turn is going to yield fewer runs, no? So if you're comparing Maddux to a similar pitcher who is striking out about 6 per game but yielding the average SLG, his results are going to be much better even if the BAPIPs are similar?