Who were the top groundball pitchers in the Cincinnati Reds farm system?

While groundball rates aren’t a big part of what makes a pitcher successful (that would be a pitchers strikeout and walk ratios), the groundball rate does make a difference on the margins. An example I like to use is that if a pitcher’s success were ice cream, the walk and strikeout rates are the ice cream, but the groundball rate is the sprinkles. It’s not the difference maker, but it can help (or hurt if a pitcher is an extreme fly ball pitcher).

Which starters were the top groundball rate guys in the system during 2015 at the full season levels?

While there’s an obvious difference in the quality of hitters in the Major Leagues and the Minor Leagues, just to give this some perspective, the average groundball rate in 2015 for pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched (which eliminates relievers from the sample) is 46%. What jumps out here is that three of the players all pitched for the Dayton Dragons all season long. Jake Paulson’s 67.1% is the highest rate for a non-rookie ball pitcher that I can remember. That’s incredibly impressive. It’s 10% higher than Tejay Antone’s 61.2%, which is also incredibly impressive.

What about the relievers from 2015 from the full season levels?

Kevin Shackelford and Evan Mitchell led the way and were a good chunk ahead of the pack. Shackelford led the organization for full season pitchers with his 67.7% groundball rate during the season. The Pensacola Blue Wahoos bullpen seemed to get a lot of groundballs with three of the top five guys spending time coming out of their pen. Kyle McMyne showed an enormous improvement in his groundball rate, going from 40.8% in 2014 to 58.4% in 2015.

Here’s how the Top 5 groundball pitchers in the rookie leagues broke down:

Juan Martinez had the highest rate of groundballs in the organization in 2015, but pitching in rookie ball he only tossed 33.1 innings. The small sample of innings does dilute the impressiveness somewhat because you can get larger variances, but that’s just the second guy over the 70% mark that I can recall in the last five years. The other guy to top that mark was Jacob Constante (in 2014), who finds himself at 63.2% this season.

As noted in the opening of the article, the groundball rate isn’t going to make or break a pitcher, but it will help them on the margins if they induce a lot of grounders to go along with good walk and strikeout rates. There have been some studies done in the past that with the advancement to each level, a pitcher loses 1% from his groundball rate. So keep that in mind when looking at these numbers.

Here’s the full list of 81 pitchers from the organization this year.

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