Dominating the Strike Zone: A Review

At his introductory press conference, Scott Harris said he wants the Tigers to dominate the strike zone. Let’s use 1,222 words to find out together if they are.

942 days ago, when the price of eggs averaged $3.82, the Detroit Tigers hired Scott Harris to be their new President of Baseball Operations.

For many Tigers fans, after one of the worst periods in franchise history, it was a breath of fresh air. Harris came over from the San Francisco Giants, and brought with him a new perspective on what Detroit Tigers baseball would be all about.

“We’re going to start with the strike zone. We want to dominate the strike zone on both sides of the ball, and we want to acquire, develop and retain players that can give us a chance to do that.”

Among many notable quotes at Harris’ initial press conference, “dominating the strike zone” stood out the most. While the idea wasn’t groundbreaking, it did lay the foundation for how Harris wanted the Tigers to operate moving forward.

942 days later, we decided to do a progress report on how much in fact the Tigers were dominating the strike zone.

Harris naturally inherited many players from the previous Tigers’ regime, but we wanted to see how the players Scott acquired on his own performed in the strike zone.

The Draft

The most obvious place to start was the draft. Harris and company now have two drafts under their belt(s), and while most of the players individually don’t have a ton of minor league experience yet, as a collective, the sample size is significant.

From the 2023 and 2024 drafts, the Tigers have 15 hitters and 16 pitchers who have appeared in rookie ball, Low A, High A and/or Double A. The hitters have accumulated 4,495 plate appearances, and the pitchers have accumulated 521 innings pitched.

For comparison’s sake, we took a look at how players acquired by the previous regime performed in those same levels from 2021 and 2022 (we’ll call it “Pre-Harris”) versus how players Harris drafted performed in those levels from 2023 to today.

Offensively, here’s what the numbers say:

Pre-Harris offense: 10.5% walk rate, 24.9% strikeout rate

Harris draftees: 12.7% walk rate, 18.8% strikeout rate

You’ll notice that not only is the walk rate for players Harris drafted significantly higher than the players acquired pre-Harris, but the strikeout rate is also significantly lower.

On the mound, here’s what the numbers say:

Pre-Harris pitching: .45 walks/inning, 1.08 strikeouts/inning

Harris draftees: .53 walks/inning, 1.11 strikeouts/inning

The results are a bit more of a mixed bag for the pitchers Harris has drafted. While the strikeouts per inning are up, the walks per inning are up as well. However, there is some nuance required here. Since coming aboard, Harris, Mark Conner and company have drafted several prep pitchers. High school arms often take more time to develop, especially in the command and control department, so a higher walk total isn’t much of a surprise.

Trades and Free Agency

Outside of the amateur draft, Rule 5 draft, international signings, and waiver claims, trades and free agency are the two main methods of acquiring players. Let’s now take a look at the types of players Harris has acquired, to see if any themes emerge.

Harris has somewhat surprisingly only made notable trades for 4 major leaguers so far (Nick Maton, Matt Vierling, Zach McKinstry and Mark Canha), and all have been hitters. He has also signed 4 hitters to big league deals (Carson Kelly, Gio Urshela, Gleyber Torres and Manuel Margot), while being more aggressive with free agent pitching, signing 10 pitchers to major league deals (deep breath: Matthew Boyd, Michael Lorenzen, Kenta Maeda, Andrew Chafin, Jack Flaherty, Shelby Miller, Alex Cobb, Tommy Kahnle, John Brebbia and José Urquidy).

Below are the career walk and strikeout numbers for all 18 of the aforementioned players before they became Tigers, along with the 2024 league averages for reference:

That’s a lot of numbers, so let’s break it down a little further.

Of the 8 big league hitters acquired via trade or free agency, 4 had better than league average walk rates, and 6 had better than league average strikeout rates. That feels fairly consistent with Harris’ “dominate the strike zone” ethos.

Of the 10 big league pitchers acquired via trade or free agency, 5 had better than league average walk rates, and 5 had better than league average strikeout rates.

At first glance, the pitching acquisitions appear to run a little counter to Harris’ strike zone proclamation, but just like with the pitchers drafted, there may be more to the story. The Tigers under Harris have turned into somewhat of a pitching factory, and through a mix of pitch design and decisions, biomechanics work, game planning and many other items I’m not smart enough to know about, they’ve often been able to get more out of pitchers once they arrive in Detroit. It’s possible that Harris, Chris Fetter and crew feel that they will be able to lower the walk rate and increase the strikeout rate for pitchers they acquire, and the numbers tend to bear that out (“Pre-D” is before they became Tigers, and “D” is the first year they played for the Tigers):

Tommy Kahnle and John Brebbia have only thrown a handful of innings in Detroit, so we don’t yet have enough information. But for the 6 pitchers who threw more than a handful of innings, 4 improved their walk rate, and 4 improved their strikeout rate after coming to Detroit.

To quote one of my favorite movies, Burn After Reading, “What did we learn here?” Well, we learned that the hitters the Tigers have drafted have done very well in dominating the strike zone, and we learned that Scott Harris generally likes to acquire big league hitters with strong strike zone management as well. On the pitching side, the results have been less conclusive, but the proverbial devil is in the deets. Draftees have done well in the strikeout department but less well in the walk department, with the caveat that prep pitchers take time to develop. Harris has targeted all types of big league pitchers via trade and free agency when it comes to the strike zone, but that comes with a caveat also; Detroit has generally been able to tune those guys up.

Actions speak louder than words, and it appears that Scott Harris meant it when he said that he wants the Tigers to dominate the strike zone.