(AUDACY) Sometimes, your basic baseball counting stats can paint the picture pretty well. For instance, the Houston Astros are leading baseball in both batting average and on-base percentage. As a result, they're 66-46 and in first place in the American League West. The Dodgers, Brewers and Giants have the three best team ERAs in the National League, and the same three squads (though not in that order) have the three best records in the NL. Sometimes, it's simple enough to put the analytics aside.
But it's pretty cool when the counting stats also line up with different analytical trends, and that happens to be the case with a top dog in the AL. We're talking about the team that leads all of baseball in striking out the opponent, the team with the second-best ERA that the AL has to offer and the team with the lowest batting average against from the helpless opposing offenses in the AL. We're talking about the Chicago White Sox, and the stat that helps to tell the story was shown toward the end of broadcast of their 11-1 victory against the Twins on Monday.
Because many of your TV sets may not have still been on due to the nature of the one-sided affair, here's the stat that ESPN shared, as captured by Reddit user u/jmanhajh:
Most 95+ mph pitches thrown this season:
-- White Sox: 4,703
-- Red Sox: 3,498
-- Mets: 3,373
-- Brewers: 3,364
-- Phillies: 3,357
That's quite the differential between the top two on the list, the first of which is the White Sox, who have thrown more than 1,200 more 95+ mph heaters over the next-best team. Among the pitchers on the White Sox who average over 95 mph on their fastballs are Liam Hendriks (97.5), Jose Ruiz (97.0), Craig Kimbrel (96.9), Garrett Crochet (96.8), Michael Kopech (96.8), Dylan Cease (96.4) and Carlos Rodon (95.8). All of them are in the top 100 in the league for that metric and all of them except for Cease rely on that four-seamer for more than half of their pitches. And then there's Lance Lynn, whose average is a little bit under 95 mph but who throws some type of fastball a whopping 92.9% of the time, good for eighth in all of baseball.
Apparently, that approach is working. Aside from the statistics that we've already recited above, opponents also have the highest whiff percentage (29.7%) against the White Sox (via Baseball Savant). Chicago has additionally held opponents to the lowest percentage of contact on pitches in the strike zone (77.8%), so it looks like overpowering teams with the fastball — the fast fastball — and then going off-speed at the appropriate moments has been a recipe for success.
Did we mention the White Sox's offense is also a top-10 machine in baseball, ranking in the top five in on-base percentage as well as other metrics? It's a good time to be a White Sox fan.
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