MLB's Weirdest Pitcher Doesn't Need Strikeouts | Baseball Bits

Here are MLB's top active pitchers by career ERA. You know these guys. Craig Kimbrell is number one overall with a 2.18, and Clayton Kershaw is the best starter, followed closely by Jacob DeGrom. As we scroll down the list, there's a good variety of arms, but there are still soft barriers of entry. The vast majority average at least 90mph on their fastball while striking out at least 1 batter per inning. Some do much more than that. But then we reach the 17th name on this list. He's just ahead of Chris Sale, but he doesn't seem to fit the mold, especially when it comes to his astronomically low strikeout rate. Really? Only 5 strikeouts per 9 innings? Let's talk about Richard Blyer. Richard Blyer was a journeyman before he ever made the big leagues. Drafted by the Rangers in 2008, he would go on to play for 10 minor league teams in 4 different organizations before reaching the majors in 2016. His debut with the Yankees was the perfect microcosm of his skillset. 3 pitches, 2 ground ball outs. That offseason, he was moved to the Baltimore Orioles, setting up one of the weirdest seasons in recent memory. Here's a brief summary So while Richard Blyer's career rate of 5 strikeouts per 9 innings would make him a power pitcher in the days of Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson, and a finesse pitcher in the days of Tom Glavin, he certainly stands out in today's MLB. What we need is a tool that can allow us to compare strikeout rates across disparate eras. Our best bet is going to be K%+. Like all stats that end with a plus, 100 is always league average, and higher is typically better. Here are the top relief seasons by K%+. Eric Gagne's 2003 campaign leads the way, which only makes his Cy Young award and lab safety glasses look even better. Turning our attention back to 2017, the Richardie Blyer-est of all Richard Blyer seasons, he struck out 9.8% of all batters faced compared to 21.6% for the league, giving him a K%+. That's not the lowest relief season on record, but it's certainly the lowest while being so darn effective. He had by far the best ERA of the bottom 15 with a fabulous 1.99. Never before had such a comparatively low strikeout rate produced such a fine season. You'd have to travel back a quarter century to find another pitcher with a sub-2 ERA while striking out less than 10% of batters faced. We're in Terry Leach territory for crying out loud. How does he get away with this? For some, pitching is simply a management of the three true outcomes. With regards to strikeouts, walks, and home runs, Zach Kranke once said, that's pretty much how I pitch. I try to keep my FIP as low as possible. We've already established that Richard Blyer would rather flip off an umpire than strike someone out. He has the lowest K% of any active pitcher. But he also maintains an extremely low home run rate. This is especially impressive considering how frequently he allows contact in the first place. In fact, Blyer has 3 separate seasons on 3 separate teams where he didn't allow a big league homer. Then, there's the walk rate, where Blyer also shines. He trails only Josh Tomlin, who's the modern record holder in this stat. This is because Tricky Ricky is one of the gutsiest pitching archetypes out there. He's a zone filler. Zone fillers are a brave bunch. Richard Blyer has played his entire career in the juiced ball era with below average velocity, yet he has the courage to say, MLB hitters actually aren't all that good. Now, he doesn't say that out loud, but the way he fills up the strike zone implies it. In 2021, only Jake McGee threw a higher percentage of pitches in the strike zone. Or at least, what StatCast's idea of the strike zone is. But look at my guy, Richard Blyer. We're talking about nearly 60% of all pitches in the strike zone. Just pumping away at that zone, filling it with hot, throbbing strikes. I can't read that without laughing. And here's the thing. I think being a zone filler works. You might not know all these names, but the combined ERA of the top 12 was 3.24. You might say, well, that's just because they have good command. But is it? Command isn't about throwing all your pitches in the strike zone. In 2020, Shane Bieber had the lowest zone percentage of all qualified starters. You think that guy wasn't putting the ball where he wanted it? Let's face it. In the 3 true outcome ERA, balls in play are synonymous with action. And Richard Blyer gives hitters more opportunities to put balls in play than anyone. The game needs him. And you know why? Because he's always playing the odds. Let's pretend you're an MLB pitcher. Yeah, I know. Unless you're Lucas Giolito watching this, it's hard to picture. I mean, seriously. You? Okay, all things equal, would you rather allow fly balls or ground balls? But before you answer that, here's a helpful guide. In the stat cast ERA, fly balls and pop ups have a 201 batting average. For ground balls, it's 246. So, as a pitcher, which batted ball type would you rather give up? I hope you didn't fall for my nasty trick. Because it's not worth trading 45 points of batting average for all that slugging. Did you know that a pitcher who only allows fly balls and pop ups would have an ERA of approximately 4.48? That's not very good. But the pitcher that only allows ground balls? 2.12. So, when we talk about Richard Blyer playing the odds with all these balls in play, keep that in mind. Ground balls are a really good outcome for a pitcher. And dig this, Richard Blyer is the only active pitcher in MLB who can say that the majority of his plate appearances end in a ground ball. That's quite the accomplishment. There's a lot of great sinker ballers in today's league, but on a per plate appearance basis, none of them are quite as prolific as Richard Blyer. He's one of just 6 pitchers in the stat cast ERA with a negative career launch angle. The average batted ball from him is heading toward the ground. This effect has created some pretty funny outings. While pitching for Baltimore in 2018, he once began an inning with a ground ball out, then surrendered a single to left field, then finished up by coaxing a double play ball from Jorge Soler. What's so interesting about that? Well, he went out the next inning and did the exact same thing. Ground ball out, single to left field, then another 4-6-3 double play ball. That's what playing the odds looks like. There are 4 individual pitches in the stat cast ERA that average less than 400 slugging after contact. There's Zach Britton's sinker, which carried him to one of the best relief seasons in MLB history. There's Zach Greinke's changeup, which has generated whiffs and soft contact all throughout his Hall of Fame career. There's Rich Hill's curveball, a gif-able work of art, and one of the most iconic pitches of the last decade. And they're all in the same company as Richard Blyer's sinker. Pitching to contact is a phrase I don't really care for, because it's just reacting to strikeout rates. If a pitcher throws a complete game without too many swings and misses, they'll always say he was pitching to contact. The phrase is even invoked on Blyer's Wikipedia page. It's only used to describe a certain type of pitcher. But what all pitchers do is pitch to miss the barrel. That's something Richard Blyer and Chris Sale can both have in common, besides the fact they were college teammates. No matter the approach, every pitcher at every level wants to miss the barrel of the bat. Sale gets on the mound and breaks strikeout records, recording whiff after whiff on his devastating slider and four-seamer. He misses barrels because he misses bats entirely. Blyer, on the other hand, moves his pitches just enough to avoid the barrel. His opponent might make contact, but they won't barrel it up. He has the league's best barrel percentage since his first full season in 2017. What a guy. The surprises never seem to end with Richard Blyer. He pitched in the playoffs in 2020, which is already quite the accomplishment for someone who's really only played for rebuilding clubs. And his brief postseason stint went about how you'd expect. Ground out, line out, which he stopped and made a brilliant play on, ground out, fly out, ground out, ground out. He really has a way of doing things. Yet, strikeouts have been trending upward for Blyer. His K-rate in 2021 was double that of 2017, but while he may be trending toward normalcy, he's still not that close to league average. A key development this year has been the re-emergence of his cutter. See, Blyer's always dominated lefties, but the cutter gives him an option against right-handed hitters, which is necessary with the 3 batter minimum. He'll even throw out of the strike zone and get swings and misses? I thought I knew you, Richard Blyer. Yet, he's still fundamentally the pitcher we love. He continues to fight the good fight on the 3 true outcomes front. His season just concluded with a walk rate and home run rate of less than 1 per 9 innings, making him the first reliever to do so since Kenley Jansen and Pat Neshek in 2017. A return to the ERA leaderboard shows that he's an outlier in terms of strikeout rate and velocity. It's a reminder that, at the end of the day, what matters most is runs. We only talk about things like FIP, velocity, or spin rate because we're trying to anticipate run prevention, and we know that past ERA isn't always a great indicator of future ERA. What the future holds for Blyer? Who can say? But no matter how we slice it or how he does it, Richard Blyer has been one of the best run preventers over the last half decade, which makes him one of the most effective pitchers in the game right now. At its absolute worst, the last few years of pitcher development have encouraged some degree of homogeneity. The feedback from an influx of new pitch tracking data seem to say, you have to throw high velocity, high backspin 4-seamers up in the zone to be great. Players like Richard Blyer have thoroughly disproven that. His success advocates for a holistic approach to development, which in turn diversifies the spectator experience. After all, who'd want to go to a baseball game where everyone on the field looks the same? Big thank you to my newest patrons. To see your name here, check out patreon.com slash foolish baseball. Also, thank you to Maxo for the music.