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Rich Harden and TTO%

By Dave Fleming

April 21, 2010

On April 7^th, Rich Harden made his first start as a member of the Texas Rangers. The mercurial Harden faced 19 batters during his outing, striking out eight, walking four, hitting one, and allowing a homerun.

That’s a strange game: as St. Louis Cardinal’s blogger Fungoes pointed out, 73.8% of the batters Harden faced did not put the ball into play. That’s a remarkable number. In Roger Clemens’ first 20-strikeout game, 21 out of 30 batters didn’t put the ball into play (70%). In his second 20-strikeout game, only 20 out of 32 batters didn’t put the ball in play (62.5%). Clemens needed his defense more than Harden did.

I’ve always been fascinated by Rich Harden. Okay…let me put it another way: every year I draft Harden on my fantasy baseball team. I always take a gamble on him. I’m always thinking Harden is going to break out and have that big year.

He hasn’t had it yet, and he hasn’t come particularly close. Over the last five seasons, Harden has averaged a little less than 100 innings pitched. That’s fine for a 1970’s closer, but it's a little low for an elite starter.

There is no question that Harden is extremely talented at striking out batters. As of right now he ranks sixth all-time among starting pitchers in strikeouts per 9 innings. Here’s the list:

Rk.	Name	K/9 IP
1	Randy Johnson	10.61
2	Mark Prior	10.37
3	Tim Lincecum	10.18
4	Pedro Martinez	10.04
5	Nolan Ryan	9.55
6	Rich Harden	9.35

That’s good company. Unfortunately, Harden has a nasty habit of walking batters: he has a career mark of 3.97 walks per 9 innings pitched. Here’s where he ranks on that list:

Rk.	Name	BB/9 IP
125	Dick Fowler	3.99
126	Jim Parque	3.98
127	Paul Foytack	3.98
128	Rich Harden	3.97
129	Faus. Carmona	3.96
130	John Maine	3.96
131	Bob Weiland	3.96

It’s one thing to be on a list with Randy Johnson, Tim Lincecum, Pedro Martinez, and Nolan Ryan. But sharing company with Dick Fowler, Jim Parque, and Bob Weiland offsets Harden’s high ranking on the other list.

His high placement on both lists, coupled with his utter disdain for the concept of ‘letting the defense make the play’ had me wondering: where does Harden rank among the all-time leaders in eschewing defense?

Three True Outcomes

‘Three True Outcomes’ is a term coined by Rany Jazayerli, in an article published on the Baseball Prospectus website backin 2000. Under pressure from minions of the Rob Deer fan club, Jazayerli outlined a formula to measure a hitter’s TTO percentage:

(HR+BB+SO)/(AB+BB)

TTO% captures the pure events from a batter/pitcher confrontation: the three ‘true’ events where defense has no bearing on the results.

The hitting leaders in TTO% are predictable: Mark McGwire, Gorman Thomas and Sam Horn were all members of the club. Jack Cust, Mark Reynolds, and Adam Dunn are modern representative of the group.

Harden’s weird pitching gem on April 7^th rates a TTO% of 73.6 by the formula:

(1 HR + 5 BB + 8 SO)/(14 AB + 5 BB)

Over his career, Harden has TTO% of 38.6. At this writing, 2780 players have notched at-bats against Harden, who has struck out 793, walked 337, and given up 72 homeruns.

(72 HR + 337 BB + 793 SO)/(2780 AB + 337 BB) = 38.6

Harden’s TTO% is lower than the percentages for guys like Mark Reynolds (49.7%) or the immortal Jack Cust (55.0%).

What if we phrase the numbers as ratios? Per homeruns, Harden allows 4.6 walks and gets 11.0 strikeouts. How does that compare to the hitters?

Harden 1 : 4.6 : 11.0

Cust 1 : 3.7 : 6.8

Reynolds 1 : 2.0 : 6.2

The big difference is strikeouts: Harden allows more walks than either Cust or Reynolds get, but Harden gets ‘em back by having almost twice as many strikeouts.

So Harden doesn’t quite rank with the Jack Custs of the world. How does he do against other pitchers? Who are the all-time leaders in pitcher TTO%?

TTO% - Relief Pitchers

To keep things simple, I’ll start with the relief pitchers. Here are the relief pitchers with the highest Three True Outcome Percentages (minimum 600 IP).

	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
1	Brad Lidge	1950	714	239	51	45.9
2	Armd. Benitez	2788	946	403	95	45.3
3	Billy Wagner	2993	1098	278	78	44.5
4	Octavio Dotel	2839	943	348	100	43.6
5	Ugueth Urbina	2567	814	307	86	42.0
6	Troy Percival	2550	781	306	85	41.0
7	Mark Clear	2950	804	554	60	40.5
8	Jeff Nelson	2832	829	428	55	40.2
9	Dick Radatz	2507	745	296	65	39.5
10	Eric Gagne	2366	718	226	76	39.4

In all, eight closer surpass the 40% mark in TTO, lead by the (sometimes) great Brad Lidge.

These are good relievers: nine of the ten players listed above made All-Star teams as relief pitchers. Gagne won a Cy Young, Lidge had a perfect season, and Dick Radatz had three monster years as a closer in Boston. Octavio Dotel is the only non-All-Star: Dotel has averaged 11.0 strikeouts per nine innings pitched over a long career.

The next ten relievers are Joe Nathan, Tom Heinke, Eric Plunk, Robb Nen, Mike Remlinger, Kyle Farnsworth, Francisco Cordero, Randy Myers, Arthur Rhodes, and Duane Ward. I assume that you know a few of those guys, too.

Lidge has the highest career TTO of any pitcher. I thought that his dreadful 2009 season would’ve contributed mightily to that career mark, but Lidge’s 2009 TTO% was just 38.9, about six percentage points below his career average. Interestingly, Lidge posted a TTO% of 44.9 in 2009, when he went a perfect 41-for-41 in save chances.

Let’s get to the starters.

TTO% - Starting Pitchers

Here are starters #20 thru #11 in career TTO%:

	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
20	A.J. Burnett	5930	1479	669	148	34.8
19	Darren Dreifort	3292	802	389	90	34.8
18	Erik Bedard	3125	801	325	75	34.8
17	Johan Santana	6403	1741	478	188	35.0
16	Jake Peavy	5117	1373	446	138	35.2
15	Sid Fernandez	6793	1743	715	191	35.3
14	J.R. Richard	5788	1493	770	73	35.6
13	Sandy Koufax	8546	2396	817	204	36.5
12	Hideo Nomo	7370	1918	908	251	37.2
11	Pedro Martinez	10355	3154	760	239	37.4

Again, we have some fine pitchers on the list. Pedro Martinez, Sandy Koufax, and Johan Santana all won multiple Cy Young Awards. Peavy is a Cy Young winner, and Hideo Nomo was a Rookie-of-the Year. J.R. Richard had two 300-strikeout seasons. Darren Dreifort….he timed his walk-year well.

We’ll do a countdown of the rest:

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
10	Scott Kazmir	3289	900	392	88	37.5

Kazmir ranks tenth on the all-time list: his strikeout rate has declined in each of the last three seasons, while his walk rate has remained steady at around 3.8 per 9 innings pitched. For Kazmir to remain an effective pitcher, he’ll need to cut that walk rate. If he does that, there’s a chance he’ll drop out of the top-ten on the TTO% list.

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
9	Sam McDowell	9059	2453	1312	164	37.9

The character of Sam Malone on ‘Cheers’ was loosely based on Sam McDowell…I didn’t know that until just now.

Like Bob Feller before him and Nolan Ryan after, Sudden Sam McDowell was uncompromising on the mound: per nine innings pitched he averaged 4.7 walks and 8.9 strikeouts, in an era when strikeouts were hard to come by.

A pitcher who walks a lot of batters pitches on a tightrope of sorts: among pitchers with over 2000 career innings, McDowell ranks 3^rd in BB/9 IP. Nolan Ryan ranks 4^th, and Bob Feller ranks 9^th.

And you know what? All of those guys pitched in contexts that helped ‘em get away with the walks. Feller walked a ton of guys…but he also whiffed a ton of guys. He dominated the league….when Feller struck out 348 hitters in 1946, only one other pitcher in the league had half that total.

Same thing with Ryan: he walked a ton of guys, but he struck out a ton of guys. And Ryan was helped in Anaheim, which was a pitcher’s park, and he was helped a lot in the Astrodome, where it was just about impossible for anyone to hit a homerun.

McDowell was helped by pitching in a low-offense era: he could get away with leading the league in walks for five years because nobody was doing much with the bats.

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
8	Rich Harden	2780	793	337	72	38.6

Here’s Rich Harden: he has a chance to rank a little higher on this list, depending on how the rest of his career plays out.

There’s a chance that Harden puts it together. He’s only twenty-eight years old; Randy Johnson didn’t figure things out until he was 29. Johnson, when he was 28, posted a strikeout rate of 10.3 per 9 innings pitched, but a walk rate of 6.1. A year later he cut the walk rate to 3.5 and came in second in the AL Cy Young race.

Harden’s throw 767 innings in the major leagues…Koufax needed that many before he figured things out. Nolan Ryan threw 500 major league innings before he learned to control his stuff enough to be an effective pitcher. It’s not impossible that Harden comes around.

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
7	Tim Lincecum	2228	693	218	34	38.6

And here’s why I always draft Rich Harden: I keep waiting for him to turn into Tim Lincecum.

Lincecum and Harden have the same TTO%, and they have nearly the same strikeout and walk rates (Lincecum has averaged 10.2 strikeouts and 3.2 walks per 9 innings pitched, while Harden has averaged 9.4/4.0). The most sizeable difference in rate stats between Harden and Lincecum in the number of homeruns allowed: Lincecum is at 0.5 HR per 9 IP, while Harden has allowed almost twice that rate (0.9 per 9 IP).

The differences are small: 0.8 strikeouts, 0.8 walks, and 0.4 homeruns per nine innings pitched. Taking into consideration that Lincecum pitches in the NL, the rate stats between Harden and Lincecum are even closer than they appear. Yet Lincecum is a two-time Cy Young winner on a Hall-of-Fame trajectory, while Rich Harden has been a bust.

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
6	Mark Prior	2475	757	223	77	39.2

We’ll get to him in a second…

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
5	Nolan Ryan	19265	5714	2795	321	40.0

Most pitchers with a high TTO% have short careers: only three starters out of the top-twenty have 10,000+ at-bats against them (Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson being the other two). Ryan laps the competition….

Who is the hitting equivalent of Ryan? In terms of TTO% hitters, it’s probably Adam Dunn: I don’t know that any hitter has been as successful at keeping baseballs away from the defense for as long as Adam Dunn has.

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
4	Oliver Perez	4001	1095	590	158	40.1

When Oliver Perez was 22 years old, he posted a 2.98 ERA in 196 innings, striking out 239 batters. That’s a good year for a 22-year old pitcher to have. Through that point in his career, Perez has pitched 412 major league innings, and had struck out an incredible 474 batters. He hasn’t been as effective since.

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
3	Randy Johnson	15159	4875	1497	411	40.7

There are four clear Hall-of-Famers on the list: Koufax, Ryan, Pedro Martinez, and Randy Johnson. We can add Johan Santana to that list, as he’ll almost certainly be elected. And Tim Lincecum has a good start towards the Hall. Jake Peavy still has a puncher’s chance, I suppose.

Seven out of twenty. Not too bad. There are sixteen Cy Young Awards among the top-twenty pitchers in TTO%.

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
2	Herb Score	3057	837	573	79	41

Who would’ve had the better career, Herb Score or Mark Prior?

I suppose that question deserves a column of its own, but we’ll give it a brief shot here.

Herb Score, as all of you know, was a brilliant young lefty for the Cleveland Indians, who was nearly killed by a Gil McDougald line drive. A few folks believethat the line drive ended his career, because it makes sense that it would end his career. But Score’s career was actually finished by an arm injury suffered two years later, in 1959.

Mark Prior, the #2 pick in the 2001 draft, has a slightly more complicated injury history, which I won’t get into here. It is possible that his arm troubles started during his collision with Marcus Giles in 2003, or from his overuse during the 2003 regular and postseason.

Here are Score’s first two seasons in the big leagues:

Year	Age	W-L	ERA	IP	K	ERA+	BB/9	K/9
1955	22	16-10	2.85	227.1	*245*	141	6.1	*9.7*
1956	23	20-9	2.53	249.1	*263*	*166*	4.7	*9.5*

As you can see, Score dominated the league, leading the AL in strikeouts both years and posting an ERA well under 3.00. He also walked a ton of batters: as a rookie he averaged 6.1 walks per 9 innings, a rate he lowered to 4.7 during his second year.

Here’s Prior:

Year	Age	W-L	ERA	IP	K	ERA+	BB/9	K/9
2002	21	6-6	3.32	116.2	147	122	2.9	11.3
2003	22	18-6	2.43	211.1	245	179	2.1	10.4

Prior didn’t lead the league in any category, but Prior showed far better control during his first two years in the majors.

Who would’ve had the better career? I think Prior was probably the better pitcher, but contexts would have given an edge to Score. Baseball was heading towards an era of historically low offensive output when Score was injured: had he avoided injury, the bulk of Score’s career would have been during that era. In contrast, Prior’s career would have overlapped a high-offense era, and he would’ve spent at least a portion of that career in homer-friendly Wrigley. The walks wouldn’t have hurt Score too much (after all, he was able to post sub-3.00 ERA in 1955 and 1956 while walking a batter every other inning). The offense and the park might’ve hurt Prior. Plus Score had a few 200-inning seasons under his belt…push come to shove, I think Score would’ve had the better career.

Rk.	Name	AB	K	BB	HR	TTO %
1	Kerry Wood	4612	1470	605	138	42.4

Wood has 1116.2 innings as a starter, 157.2 as a relief pitcher, so he belongs with the starters for now. He made 178 starts, 156 relief appearances, so another year and there’ll be room for debate. Right now, Kerry is #1.

And just to come full circle: in Wood’s 20-strikeout game, 21 out of 29 batters failed to put the ball into play (20 strikeouts, 1 hit-by-pitch). That is a TTO% of 72.4...that’s still below the 73.8 TTO% of Rich Harden’s first outing.

So there’s time for Harden to catch up.

Dave Fleming is a writer living in Chicago, IL. He welcomes comments, questions, and logarithms proving the clutchiness Darnell McDonald here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com

COMMENTS (13 Comments, most recent shown first)

DaveFleming
Ron,

The A's used him as a middle reliever in 2005, but that was probably an effort to prevent an injury, rather than a long-term strategic plan. The thing is, Harden's been really good as a starter: 52-30, 3.40 ERA, 9.3 K/9. As it's more useful to have a starter rather than a reliever, the teams that have had Harden have tried to keep him in the rotation.

I don't know if making him a closer would improve his injury record...it might, but it might not. I don't know enough about his injury history to tackle that.

Generally: unless a team has a plethora of talented arms, it's best to keep your best arms in positions where they can pitch the most inningz.
10:15 AM May 14th

Ron
Dave, Has anyone ever tried Harden as a closer? It seems to me with his short innings pitched per year , and great stuff it would be a good fit for him
4:14 PM May 6th

77royals
Nolan Ryan hit a homerun in his first AB in the Astrodome.
5:18 PM Apr 30th

rnj
Just a history quibble. Considering Ben Hitz was calling himself Ayatollah of the Three True Outcomes back in 1996 I'd say your proposed timeline is wrong.

A different founding member of Prospectus (Dave Pease) had a rdfc website in the same time frame (and was claiming the title Exalted Leader and Deer Duce for Life, Rob Deer Fan Club in 1995)

Interestingly the first mention of TTO% that I can find on RSB comes in the form of a question asked by Patrick Matthews -- who provides a definition. Answered by Sean Lahman (of the Lahman database).
2:58 PM Apr 26th

DaveFleming
Just to be brief: the strikeout rate per nine innings pitched in the AL in, say, 1965, was 6.0. That was the year McDowell K'd 325 batters. In 1968 the rate was again 6.0 in the AL. Last year the strikeout rate in the AL was 6.9.

Strikeouts are easier...what I meant is that the strikeout rate is a bit higher for modern pitchers than it was for pitchers of McDowell's generation. That's a broad generalization: I haven't looked at each year, but I think it's generally true. Someone can (and will) correct me if it isn't.
10:18 AM Apr 24th

Kev
Another good one, Dave. But I don't understand what you mean by referencing Sam McDowell averaging 8.9 strikeouts "when strikeouts were hard to come by". What causes strikeouts to be hard to come by?
11:55 PM Apr 23rd

chuck
Two more...
Mitch Williams had 691 ip, 49 hr, 544 bb and 660 k's. (49+544+660)/(2460 ab + 544 bb) = 41.7%.
Good enough for 6th place on the reliever list.

The other would make the very top if you lower the 600 ip threshold. (Dibble had 477.)
Rob Dibble: (27+238+645)/(1685+238) = 47.3%.

Duane Ward didn't make the list, but in looking I saw his innings pitched bear the mark of the Beast ... 666.666etc
5:21 PM Apr 23rd

krgrecw
Dave, Lidge doesn't have 600 IPP
4:59 PM Apr 23rd

DaveFleming
Yeah, that's a typo on my part: I used (AB+BB) for the actual tables, but I wrote the formula down incorrectly at the start of the article. It's been fixed. Thanks for the heads-up.
5:37 PM Apr 22nd

mskarpelos
I think the formula (HR+BB+SO)/(AB+SO) is wrong. It should be ((HR-IPHR)+BB+HBP+SO)/(AB+BB+HBP). Even in simplified form, the denominator should be (AB+BB) not (AB+SO).

Very informative article, though. I had no idea who the TTO leaders were on the pitching side.
2:28 PM Apr 22nd

jrickert
I went to Retrosheet, http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/W/Lwoodk0020.htm
and found that Wood's TTO% splits as

42.6% starting and 41.0% in relief.

Looking at his annual totals,

Starting: 48.7, 40.5, 45.1, 39.0, 40.7, 36.9, (41.7), 31.3
relieving: (53.3), 37.0, 39.6, 41.8

The (values) are for 2005, the one year that he pitched in both roles.
9:50 AM Apr 22nd

Richie
Yup, thanks Dave.
6:00 PM Apr 21st

Kev
Dave,

Yeah, but can Darnell dunk?

Very interesting article Dave...lots of things to chew on. Thanks.

2:59 PM Apr 21st

Rich Harden and TTO%

COMMENTS (13 Comments, most recent shown first)

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