Pitching Dominance

Before I start delving into the Milwaukee Brewers for the 2009 season, I have been crunching some numbers and looking for new ways to calculate dominance. As I was searching through Fangraphs I pulled the pitching data for SPs with a minimum of 100 innings since 2005.

I developed SP Dominance, which is the following:
(1 minus Contact%) * (First Pitch K%) * (O-Swing %)

This is a very raw stat in it's early development, so I would gladly look for feedback from anyone who would like to make comments. The reason I choose those 3 categories are:

First Pitch K%
Getting ahead or behind after the 1st pitch definitely sets the tone for the entire AB.

O-Swing %
Getting batters to expand the strike zone is a huge benefit for pitching.

1 minus Contact %
At times pitchers must throw strikes, and it measures how tough they are to hit in all situations.

Here are the Top 5 from each of the past four seasons:
2008
.057 - CC Sabathia
.053 - Rich Harden
.048 - Ervin Santana
.046 - Jake Peavy
.044 - Javier Vazquez, Cole Hamels, and Dan Haren

2007
.061 - John Smoltz
.049 - Johan Santana
.047 - Cole Hamels
.047 - Kelvim Escobar
.045 - Javier Vazquez

2006
.051 - John Smoltz
.050 - Johan Santana
.047 - Jake Peavy
.045 - Jeremy Bonderman
.045 - CC Sabathia

2005
.054 - Johan Santana
.040 - Jake Peavy
.040 - John Smoltz
.037 - Rich Harden, Andy Pettitte, and Javier Vazquez


Finally, a look at five of the premier pitchers over the past four seasons.