Low Three Quarter Media

By Josh Bookbinder

Recently, an interesting tweet sequence came across the LTQM timeline on Twitter (X), courtesy of Alex Chamberlain:

The final graph is particularly interesting. It makes a lot of sense, when you think about it, and Alex is right: it’s pretty intuitive. As a hitter, you “give up” on a pitch out of the zone that breaks back for a strike and you attack a pitch in the zone and whiff if it breaks sharply out of the zone.

It also makes sense in application. When you look at the highest out-of-zone% pitchers in the majors, the list includes high swing-and-miss guys like Blake Snell, Dylan Cease, and Kodai Senga. What I think is interesting is that the reverse is not true. Whiff% for the top in-zone% players ranges widely, from George Kirby to Miles Mikalos.

I think what’s particularly interesting is that there has been a dearth of “backdoor” or “frontdoor” pitches like Alex showcases in those tweets recently. It’s an old-school pitching special, but it’s fallen out of favor.

I think this is because there is little room for error with pitches breaking back into the zone, while there is plenty of room for error with pitches breaking out of the zone. If you miss with a pitch breaking out of the zone, it’s a ball; miss breaking back in, and it’s probably a meatball. Pitchers have realized that the former is probably preferable to the latter.

Those front- and back-door pitches are incredibly effective, but the reason whiffs are much more reliable than called strikes is because of the potential for misses. The called strikes are also much mroe reliant on pinpoint accuracy, which is being coached out of the game in favor of more electric stuff.

There will always be the Nola, Mikalos, Maddux-types that thrive on location. I will always love and appreciate them for making the game more accessible and fun. But unfortunately, I don’t think they’re going to retake the throne as the majority any time soon.