Carlos Zambrano had a no-hitter going into the eighth inning for the Cubs earlier this week. He also was the hitting star of the game with four RBI including a three-run homer. But paging through The Bill James Handbook 2006 looking for other Carlos Zambrano tidbits I ran across the fact that he led the National League last year allowing only one (!) stolen base in 10 attempts against him. That's very impressive, especially for a right-handed pitcher. On top of that, he picked off three runners.

Is Zambrano the best in baseball? How does he rank? To properly evaluate pitchers in this category we have to look at three things: 1) Are runners intimidated to run against them (i.e. how often do they run)? 2) How successful are they when they do run? And 3) How often does the pitcher pick off runners?

Taking these all into account here are the best since the beginning of 2005 (minimum 100 innings):

These five pitchers stand out over the rest. The next best was Dontrelle Willis who allowed a 30% steal rate with one pickoff. Chris Capuano is especially impressive with his 8 pickoffs on top of the 11 runners caught stealing.

Wood and Zambrano are the only righties.

The other Zambrano is on the list of the worst pitchers at holding runners:

Surprisingly, the two worst on this list (Vargas and Perez) are both lefties.