Ground game control: Pitchers changing approach to the game

Strikeouts have been steadily climbing to record highs for a decade. Intentional walks and sacrifice bunts are at all-time lows. Runs and batting average are at generational worsts.

Baseball has been breaking ground at the extremes this decade — including on the ground itself.

Groundball rates also at their highest and have been since 2010. This year’s 46.3% ground ball percentage is a record high, and the 1.53 groundball-to-flyball ratio is the first time there have been one and a half times as many balls on the ground as airborne.

Such batted-ball trajectory numbers exist since 1988 in STATS, LLC’s database, and the last six seasons are the six highest, yet this trend has kept a perhaps appropriately low profile across the sport.

“We’ve started a trend now with ground balls?” sinker-balling Orioles closer Zach Britton said when told of the data. “When you’re younger, (coaches) always preach ‘pound the bottom of the zone.’ There’s more room for error down there.”

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There are several, fairly logical reasons why grounders are so coveted by pitching staffs. Quick outs can help a pitcher’s efficiency and help him work deeper into games. Only ground balls down the lines go for extra-base hits; prevent those and it takes three singles to score a run. (Doubles, incidentally, are at their lowest in two decades.) Also, more common and more advanced defensive shifts have turned more of those grounders into outs.

There is even a change to the game’s infrastructure — a documented lower strike zone — that’s helping encourage pitchers to continue pounding the knees. STATS, LLC has classified 42% of all pitches this season as “low,” which is 3% higher than any other season.

Informed of the totality of these numbers, Diamondbacks first baseman Paul Goldschmidt quipped, “No wonder scoring is down.”

The implications extend beyond the importance of a good grounds crew, good infield defense and hitters who can lift low pitches. The concurrent increases in strikeouts and grounders even mean outfield putout rates are at their lowest in a half-century. There’s never been a better time to stash a poor fielder on the three-acre expanse of outfield grass.

Under former manager Tony La Russa and his longtime pitching coach, Dave Duncan, the Cardinals embraced sinking two-seam fastballs and other groundball-inducing pitches at the bottom of the zone with more fervor than any club in baseball. In the decade from 2004 through 2013, they ranked first in the majors in ground ball rate six times and in the top-five three of the other four years.

“I think that’s a key to win games,” St. Louis catcher Yadier Molina said. “Every time you keep the ball on the ground, good things are going to happen. If you pitch up, you’re going to get some strikeouts too, but you’re going to get some doubles and home runs, too.”

The Pirates have since surpassed their division rivals with gusto: the three highest single-season rates belong to Pittsburgh in 2013, 2015 and 2014 — the only three years a pitching staff has reached at least 51.5%.

“The philosophy coming up through the ranks of pitching inside, pitching down, creating angles, forcing contact in the first three pitches — those were things I didn’t really have a choice on,” said Pittsburgh ace Gerrit Cole, noting that he’d always prefer a one-pitch groundout to a several-pitch strikeout. “Those are the Pirates’ core philosophies. If you want to get to the big league club, these are things you have to do well.”

Pirates assistant general manager Kyle Stark, previously the organization’s farm director, noted that development plans are tailored to individual pitchers but added that generating weak contact is a priority.

“Consistent angle keeps the ball off the barrel, gets it on the ground, and limits damage,” Stark wrote in an email.

Now the Diamondbacks — where La Russa is chief baseball officer — as well as the Dodgers, Astros and others are all joining in.

“It’s not just sinkers,” La Russa said. “It’s pitching down in the zone with movement.”

It’s no pitching cure-all, of course. The Red Sox, for instance, acquired Rick Porcello, Wade Miley, Joe Kelly and Justin Masterson — four pitchers known for working low — yet they have the AL’s worst rotation ERA. Each has seen his grounder rate decline this season, all but Miley by at least 5%.

The avowed king of ground balls is Arizona reliever Brad Ziegler, who since debuting in 2008 has led the majors by leaps and bounds in double-play rate: 1.67 per nine innings, which is 19% better than anyone else (minimum 400 innings). He induces grounders on two-thirds of all batted balls — 67% — and, not surprisingly, leads the majors with the greatest percentage of pitches at the knees or below the strike zone (83%, according to BaseballSavant.com).

Ziegler guesses the trend can be attributed to the influx of sabermetrics, and the particular roster of clubs preaching this philosophy suggests he’s right.

“If a ground ball seeps through, it doesn’t change my approach at all,” he said. “I’m still trying to get a ground ball, but hopefully it’s at somebody next time because then we might able to get two.”

Cardinals minor league pitching coordinator Tim Leveque has said that forcing weak contact is only half the battle and that there is a “psychological benefit” for pitchers being aggressive in the zone, as the result often is either a quick out or an early-count strike.

The league lowered the strike zone in 1996 to include the “hollow beneath the kneecap,” but that wasn’t always enforced in practice only recently, when the Zone Evaluation system started grading umpires in hopes of creating uniformity.

Jon Roegle, a writer at The Hardball Times, has studied Pitch F/X data and concluded that “the strike zone has had a full three inches – the diameter of a baseball – tacked on to the bottom within half a decade.”

Commissioner Rob Manfred said “there has been no instruction this year that’s any different with respect to calling the strike zone.” Joe Torre, MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations, acknowledged that more low strikes were called last year than the year before but said the rate has remained flat this season.

Many players feel the same as Giants catcher Buster Posey did when asked about whether the strike zone felt lower: “I tread on thin ice when talking about strike zones,” he said, while not commenting further on the location of the zone.

Others are glad that, if umpires are going to call more marginal strikes, they do so at the knees and jersey letters rather than adding inches to the corners.

“I’ve never had a problem — as a player or as a manager — with a strike zone that is over the plate but up and down,” Houston skipper A.J. Hinch said. “The problem that I have is if it ever exceeds the allowed width of the plate.”

It’s up to hitters to combat this downward trend by making an appropriate adjustment and front offices to assemble capable batters. The division-winning 2012 and 2013 A’s, for example, had an exaggerated low-swinging, flyball-hitting lineup. Others, such as Baltimore center fielder Adam Jones, prefer not to try lifting low pitches.

“Don't give it a chance,” he said. “If you see something you like, hit it. That's been my motto.”

In the past decade, league-average fastball velocity has risen 1.5 miles per hour to 92 mph. More hurlers are featuring late movement on their pitches. And now more strikes are being thrown at or just below the knees.

“Especially with as hard as everybody’s throwing now, if they can pitch at the bottom of the zone,” Ziegler said, “it’s a good time to not be a hitter.”