There is a new blog that I’ve been following in the past couple of weeks called Saber-Scouting. It’s a mix of stats and traditional scouting information, I’d suggest you give it a read if you have not. Today they posted a discussion on a statistic called PTO% or Pitches Toward Outs stating it to be a measure of a given pitchers dominance.

Whether or not this statistic measures “dominance” it is still a good look at how efficiently a pitcher gets through an opposing lineup. The folks at Saber-Scouting looked at how each starting pitcher that received CY Young votes fared in 2007 and had Justin Verlander ranking 12th out of 16 with 28.9%. While it’s interesting to look at starters, relievers have the same if not more importance on dominating opposing lineups. They are called upon to get quick outs and shut down a batter with inherited runners on base.

Since they only took a look at perceived “aces” for each team, I’ve calculated the stat for each Tiger pitcher including relievers. This is based on 2007 stats for pitchers who saw at least 20 innings of work.

You almost could have guessed at the results here without having to look at the statistics. Jeremy Bonderman racks up strikeouts and usually doesn’t throw many pitches whether he’s killing opposing batters or getting killed. Kenny Rogers is the opposite of Jeremy falling more into the ‘Finesse’ category of pitching relying on location and the defense behind him to make plays on balls hit.

Again, no large surprises here except maybe Zach Miner. Miner scored rather bad with this statistic not only when compared with other relievers but all Tiger pitchers. For fun I ran Joel Zumaya’s 2006 season and he had a PTO% of 31.15. I hope he can return to form.