Any list of active players who are the most below average in nearly any category (batting average, home runs, walks, etc.) is going to produce a list of good players, because it's a list of guys who have played several years in the league. These players are almost always OK players.

2002-2003 records of those guys...

Hampton 21-23
Glavine 27-25
Buehrle 33-26
Rueter 24-13
Mays 12-16
Suppan 22-27
Sparks 8-22
Cornejo 7-22
Brian Anderson 20-22
Jimmy Anderson 9-18

overall record, 183-214 over 20 player-seasons. Not all that bad.

Most (if not all) of those guys are control freaks. They don't have the gas to blow people away, but their control is (usually) good enough that they don't leave any meatballs in the sweet spot of the strike zone.

Hijack:

It's sort of related -- I've been thinking about K rates recently.

Baseball Prospectus views a drop in K rate as a sign of impending trouble for pitcher. That is, they are not as dominant as they used to me.

However, after watching Halladay this year, it seems that a drop in K rate can also be an indication of a pitcher maturing and becoming more efficient in their approach.

Roy has learned to how to get guys out without striking them out. He can still K guys when he needs to, but he doesn't try to strike everyone out any more because he doesn't need to. And the advantage is that he can throw complete games on less than 100 pitches.

Mariano Rivera is the other guy who's K rate has fallen from his first couple years in the big leagues. And BP thought he was injured. I think he just learned he can throw his cutter all the time and induce weak ground balls.

It's almost exclusively starting pitchers

The thing is, Sinins likes counters over rates in a big way. You're not going to see a reliever in a list like this becuase they don't throw enough innings to rack up a big total of "league strikeouts" to compare against their own strikeouts.

One time I asked Lee if he has considered normalizing his numbers to give them more context. He didn't reply. Another time I told Lee he was getting absurd with his ranting about what a useless stat Wins are. He banned me. Good thing I have more than one e-mail address.

So, does the self-selection of this particular list, in addition to favoring guys who have been around a while, also favor starters over relievers because of the presumptive increase in career innings pitched?

Jacko: Doc's K rate has gone up this year to 6.90 from 6.32...

However, after watching Halladay this year, it seems that a drop in K rate can also be an indication of a pitcher maturing and becoming more efficient in their approach.

Roy has learned to how to get guys out without striking them out. He can still K guys when he needs to, but he doesn't try to strike everyone out any more because he doesn't need to. And the advantage is that he can throw complete games on less than 100 pitches.

I actually *would* be concerned with Halladay's drop in K rate if he had had one... he hasn't. What he has had, is a decline in his walk rate. The 266 innings at barely over 100 pitches a start is a result of a miniscule walk rate, instead of a low K rate.

Why do I say this? Look at his AL counterparts who had about 7 K per 9 innings (starters with 6.5 to 7.5 K/9)... Halladay is at 6.90.

Halladay had 13.6 pitches per inning, easily the best in the AL.

Joaquin Benoit - 18.5
Ted Lilly - 16.5
R.A. Dickey - 17.2
Casey Fossum - 17.2
Billy Traber - 16.7
Jeremy Affeldt - 16.6
Scot Shields - 15.4
John Lackey - 16.1
Sterling Hitchcock - 17.9

Why are these guys throwing so many pitches?

Walk rates. Not only do walks prolong innings, meaning more batters and more pitchers, they involve throwing tons of pitches. Look at the K/W rates of these guys (remember, they are all about the same K rate, so the K/W will approximate their walk rate)...

Benoit 1.71
Lilly 2.53
Dickey 2.47
Fossum 1.85
Traber 2.20
Affeldt 2.58
HALLADAY 6.38
Shields 2.92
Lackey 2.29
Hitchcock 2.00

Notice too how the guys with the relatively higher walk rates threw more pitches per inning.

Halladay is the poster boy for the "throw strikes" philosophy.

The Rivera point is interesting. Rivera is an odd duck; this, of all pitchers, is an example of a guy with a really good BABIP record. Rivera, of course, doesn't even bother to set guys up, he just throws that cutter and a good straight sinking fastball, always down in the zone, and hopes to jam lefties and force righties to hit it softly the other way.

But Rivera's K rate, which declined a lot a few years ago, actually went back up the last couple of years. His stuff is too good to hit.

Jacko: Doc's K rate has gone up this year to 6.90 from 6.32...


Er oops.

Perception and reality are once again out of sync :)

It seemed like every time Roy had a great start this year, he didn't strike out all that many guys...

Next time I check the numbers first.

And before anyone else kindly points it out, Rivera's K rate did drop in 98/99/00, but then came right back up again in 01/02/03 (though not to pre-98 levels).