RESEARCH: Extreme GB and FB pitchers

It has long been a dictum of fantasy baseball that groundball (GB) pitchers are to be sought and flyball (FB) pitchers avoided. But there is a competing school of thought that says the pitchers to target are those who are at the extremes on either side of that divide—that high-FB pitchers are just as valuable as high-GB ones.

In this R&A essay, we’ll look at some high-level stats to see if there’s any validity to any of it.

We’ll explain the methods as we go. But first, let’s look at the MLB-wide rates for all main categories of outcomes per Batter Faced (BF) by all pitchers, in the individual years 2008-11 and the combined period 2008-11:

         |----- % of Batters Faced* -----|
Season    K%   BB%   IF%   OF%   GB%  ...

Almost!

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