Quote:
Originally Posted by Curve Ball Dave
Watching a good pitcher have hitters eat of his hand all game is easily observed. It not always easily measured.
Until someone comes up with a "Batters fooled per nine innings" stat, there is no one good way to measure it. Measuring how much skill a pitcher has is a combination of many things.
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If you feel that something happens a lot when you watch it, but after actually counting it, and it doesn't happen much, then it really doesn't happen much.
And there are already good stats better than the number of times batters fooled. If a batter is "fooled", but the ball turns out to be a homerun, than the fooling is pretty pointless. What's meaningful are outs, and we are already measuring outs. BABIP-type of stats are measuring exactly what you are talking about
: if a pitcher is good at fooling hitters into ground-outs or fly-outs, the pitcher would have a low BABIP.
And yes, some pitchers have lower BABIPs in the long run, which is probably a demonstration of their skill. It's just that the difference from baseline is never as big as the differences in strikeouts or walks.