In an interesting piece this week at MLB.com, dozens of pitchers and hitters were asked which stat they value the most.
Only one player, red-hot Athletics second baseman Jed Lowrie, cited hard contact rate.
“Once you hit the ball, there's not a whole lot else you can do,” Lowrie said simply.
In that regard, the Phillies’ rotation has been the best in the majors. Jake Arrieta, Aaron Nola, Vince Velasquez and Nick Pivetta all rank among the top-six in all of baseball in least hard contact allowed.
1. Jake Arrieta (PHI) — 17.7%
2. Aaron Nola (PHI) — 21.6%
3. Jose Berrios (Min) — 22.4%
4. Vince Velasquez (PHI) — 22.6%
5. Brandon McCarthy (Atl) — 23.3%
6. Nick Pivetta (PHI) — 23.5%
Arrieta and Nola certainly pass the eye test. Arrieta leads the National League with a groundball rate over 61 percent and Nola isn’t far behind. Both have induced plenty of weak contact in the form of grounders and lazy pop-ups. Neither has a high strikeout rate, but both have opponents’ batting averages below .208.
It is a bit surprising to see Velasquez and Pivetta ranked so high, though it speaks to the quality of stuff in the Phillies’ rotation. They both miss a lot of bats but haven’t been consistent enough. April was a great month for Pivetta, but he was rocked in D.C. over the weekend in his worst major-league start. Velasquez rebounded in his last start to allow just a run over five innings.
MLB
“It's something that's become more readily available and, honestly, more objective, too,” Lowrie said of hard-hit contact rate. “In the past, you used to have a video guy determining whether you hit the ball hard. There was no exit velocity that was being tracked. So until Statcast came around, it was a little subjective. You could hit the ball hard, and the video guy didn't think you hit it hard and he would put, 'Well, that was a medium hit as opposed to a hard hit.'"
With the data more plentiful and methodology more meaningful in 2018, this is one of the more important categories for any pitcher or hitter, and it’s certainly one the Phillies will be happy to lead as a staff.