The sample size is still small, but most of Huston Street’s peripheral numbers appear to be trending in a positive direction this season. His strikeout rate is up, his home run rate is down, his batting average-against is down, and his walk rate is right in line with his career norms. And with the tallying of his 19th save (in 21 opportunities) Saturday night, dropping his earned-run average to a team-best 2.42, all would appear to be well in Streetland.
Except, well, results don’t tell the whole story.
One of the leading theories as to why Street has found so much success without overpowering stuff concerns his command. Specifically, his ability to get batters not just to chase pitches off the outside edge of the zone, but also to make a bulk of their contact on those offerings. Noted blogger Jeff Sullivan calls this phenomenon Street’s “Marianoization,” after all-time great Mariano Rivera.
For most of his career, Rivera was the best in baseball at getting batters to make (weak) contact on non-strikes, with pitches out of the zone regularly accounting for 40%–50% of balls in play against him. Mariano was so zeroed in on the edges of the plate that hitters had no choice but to offer at pitches they’d typically let go by. As you might expect, this was a big reason why the league had such a hard time squaring up the ball against Rivera—if a batter is never given anything good to hit, how can they be expected to hit well?
In the article linked above, Sullivan found that Street’s rise into the upper echelon of the Proven Closer™ ranks coincided with a Mo-esque rise in the percentage of out-of-zone pitches put in play against him:
Street mostly hovered around the high 30s [from 2008-2011. In 2012], he took a step forward, and [in 2013], he took another. Over the last three years, Street has the highest such rate in baseball, at 47%. Last season [2014], he led baseball at 51%.
Street has always been an above-average reliever, but his spike in out-of-zone contact appears to have taken him to another level. From 2005–2011, Street posted a 143 ERA+. Since channelling his inner Mariano, his ERA+ has risen more than 30 points, to 174. Correlation doesn’t always imply causation, but the case here seems to be pretty strong. If nothing else, it at least seems to make intuitive sense—as weak contact goes up, things like BABIP and ERA should go down.
All of which brings us to the wrench in the works: This season, just 21 of the 69 pitches (30.4%) put in play against Street have been out of the zone, which is his lowest rate on record. Street is actually throwing a slightly lower percentage of pitches in the zone overall this season (42.3%), he’s just not getting as many batters to offer at those pitches. His O-Swing% currently sits at 31.2%, which is his lowest mark since 2008 and a full seven percentage points lower than 2014.
So what’s going on?
Well, it comes back to command and control. If Street were hitting his spots on the outer edges of the zone and getting ahead of hitters like he usually does, his chase rate and overall Mariano-ness would probably be in line with recent seasons. However, Street has had a tough time finding a consistent release point this year. His first-pitch strike percentage is down to a career-low 56.3%, which has led to a career-worst rates in 3-0 counts (5.8%) and in 0-2 counts (18.4%). If he were getting to 0-2 counts at his normal rate (28%), you can bet that hitters would be hacking at a lot more pitches off the plate. Seeing as he’s not, it’s a bit of a marvel that his numbers—.239 BABIP included—are still so good.
As I see it, this seemingly incongruous juxtaposition means one of two things:
1) That Huston Street is in for a rude awakening when the small-sample gods come calling if he can’t get his command under control,
or
2) That this theory about his masterful painting of the outside corners being the key to his recent success doesn’t tell the whole story, and he’ll keep defying the odds (and gods) even with lesser command.
I’m secretly hopeful it’s the latter, but don’t be surprised if it ends up being the former.
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