Tanner Scott is 15 appearances into the season, and by extension 15 appearances into his four-year, $72 million Dodgers contract, and a lot of things are working as normal. He has a 2.40 ERA, almost exactly the same as the 2.31 he posted in a breakout campaign with Miami two years ago. He has a 2.93 FIP, just one hundredth of a run up from his mark last season. He has eight saves, which is commensurate with his role: Closer on a really good team.
But he hasn’t walked anyone. In 15 innings, having faced 54 batters, he hasn’t walked anyone. This falls into the most annoying April blog category of: “Please don’t mess with my premise before this article runs,” but as of this writing, Scott has thrown more innings than any pitcher in the league with zero walks. Only three pitchers with two or fewer walks on the year have thrown more innings than Scott.
That’s because he’s pounding the zone. Scott’s first-pitch strike rate is an astounding 85.2%, the highest number in baseball. That’s helped by a 45.1% chase rate, which is the highest mark in the league among pitchers with at least 10 innings this year. But Scott is also throwing in the zone a career-high 57.1% of the time, which is in the 87th percentile for pitchers with at least 10 innings this year.
“A ‘career-high’ in-zone rate,” I hear you asking. “Perhaps that would indicate that Scott’s newfound commitment to the strike zone is a historical aberration?”
An astute observation, my friends. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Scott has exhibited an indifference to the strike zone — every pitcher is at least trying to hit the target, after all — but he walked 12.2% of opponents last year. In his career year, 2023, Scott walked 7.8% of the batters he faced, which is the only time he’s posted a walk rate under 11% in a major league season of any length. He’s the last pitcher I would have expected to exhibit such fanatical devotion to the strike zone. I’m not even sure it’s the same guy.
Given that Scott’s 10.0% walk rate across 2023 and 2024 came with a 2.04 ERA, it would have been understandable if he and the Dodgers had just decided not to mess with what worked. There’s a lot of tolerance for free baserunners if opponents are hitting .183, as they did across those two seasons.
But to a pitcher, a high walk rate is like going around town with your fly unzipped. Even if you can get away with it, it’s kind of embarrassing.
By pounding the zone the way he has, Scott has not only cut down on walks, he’s altered the shape of his at-bats in numerous other ways. If he throws the first pitch of the at-bat for a strike, one of two things is going to happen. In the first case, the batter is going to swing and put it in play, which Scott’s opponents have done 10 times in 54 plate appearances. Those 10 swings have resulted in three hits, all singles. A .300 opponent batting average is bad, but a .600 opponent OPS is actually quite good.
Especially because of what happens if they don’t swing, or don’t put it in play. Scott has gone to an 0-1 count 36 times, and a 1-0 count just nine times. (Which makes 55 total first pitches, not 54. On April 20, Scott threw two pitches to Jake Burger before Wyatt Langford got caught stealing to end the game, so a plate appearance was never recorded. That’s how Scott has thrown a first pitch 55 times this year but only faced 54 batters.)
Your Little League coach probably impressed the importance of strike one on you, but just in case: Batters who go up in the count 1-0 are hitting .246/.372/.413 this year. Batters who go down 0-1 are hitting .214/.263/.328. That alone makes a commitment to strike one worth it for a pitcher like Scott.
All the more so because Scott derives so much of his success from getting batters to chase. Scott’s repertoire is so simple it borders on crude: A mid-90s four-seamer with some 17 inches of rise, against a tight upper-80s slider used mostly down in the zone and as a chase pitch. Hard fastball up, hard breaking ball down: It’s the peanut butter and jelly sandwich of single-inning reliever arsenals, and Scott is as good at using it as anyone. Actually, it’s even simpler than PB&J, which has three ingredients, counting the bread.
In 2024, Scott was in the 84th percentile for chase rate. In 2023, he was in the 99th. In 2022, his last pre-breakout season, he had a 96th-percentile whiff rate but a 47th-percentile chase rate. His ERA that year was 4.31. Getting hitters to swing is the whole proverbial ballgame.
If a hitter thinks the incoming pitch is going to be a strike, that’s a pretty powerful incentive to swing. Even if he knows there’s a good chance Scott could either be climbing the ladder with his fastball or dropping an anvil with his slider, the hitter knows that if he swings, at least he’s giving himself a fighting chance.
As I said earlier, Scott is leading the league in chase rate. Batters are 61% more likely to swing at a pitch outside the zone from Scott than they are against the average big league pitcher. (Big names who are within half a percentage point of average in chase rate: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Garrett Crochet, Tarik Skubal, Jhoan Duran.) So far, the league’s hitters would rather go out on their feet than on their knees.
But there is, as always, a catch. As hitters catch on to the idea that Scott is throwing in the strike zone now, they can get their money’s worth out of their swings. If a pitch could end up anywhere, whether it looks like a strike out of the hand or not, hitters have to go on the defensive. The hockey goalie approach (“Oh God, I can barely see, just don’t let it get by me!”) can be refined into more of a golf approach (“I know where the ball is going to be, so I can square it up.”)
This is, of course, why pitchers ever throw the ball outside the strike zone. And while Scott’s numbers this year are still superb overall, it’s a lesson he’s learning at the cost of runs. Scott’s in-zone contact rate (80.8%) is still better than average among qualified relievers, but he’s 54th in the league now, while last year he was 10th. He’s gotten barreled four times and allowed two home runs, and April isn’t even over yet; last year he surrendered eight barrels and only three dingers in 72 innings all season.
And the efficiency gains that come with throwing more strikes have a less pronounced effect for relievers than they do starters. Last season, Scott threw 3.96 pitches per plate appearance, which is not particularly efficient. Out of 402 pitchers who threw at least 40 innings in the majors, Scott was 238th-most efficient. If you filter out the no-hopers who walked the world, it doesn’t change much; Scott was 42nd out of 74 pitchers with an ERA under 3.00.
So far this season, he’s made significant gains in that respect. Scott is now throwing 3.54 pitches per plate appearance, which would’ve been 10th on that leaderboard last year. Extrapolating those savings out over the total number of batters Scott faced last year, that comes to 123 1/2 fewer pitches in an entire season. Everything helps, but that’s not exactly the difference between a lifetime of elbow health and a one-way ticket to Tommy John surgery.
The key going forward for Scott will be finding a happy medium somewhere between these two extremes. And given that he’s been successful both as a wild man and as a resolute strike-thrower, I imagine he’ll be able to find that balance.
All stats are through games on Monday, April 28.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com