Are you scared of drafting flyball pitchers?

[Moonlight J]

Did a piece at BP today about infield fly ball rates and how that helps temper the damage flyballs do to pitchers and how it's a repeatable skill.

I looked at 4,185 pitchers who have thrown at least 100 IP and separated them into 3 groups:

IFF >= 12%
IFF < 5%
everything in between

BABIP by group:
.273
.279
.288

FIP's of that group:
4.08
3.77
4.02

guys with consistently high IFF rates: Weaver, Kershaw, Garza, Lilly.

[The Dane]

I'm scared of drafting all pitchers.

Good stuff, Jason!

[cardboardbox]

Its interesting to find the pitchers with strong groundball tendencies who are very high on the IFF rankings like Halladay, Lester, and Garza.

[Moonlight J]

Its interesting to find the pitchers with strong groundball tendencies who are very high on the IFF rankings like Halladay, Lester, and Garza.

Yea, making good contact against those guys is tough because of just how much movement their signature pitches get.

[Sharky]

Jason, enjoyed the read. It's a very clever idea to look at pitchers in that light. Another consideration in analyzing flyball-prone pitchers is context (primarily stadium, but also defense). A guy pitching in Petco (Luebke?) is very different from a flyball pitcher in Citizens Bank Ballpark.