Tanner Scott and the Ideal Zone Rate

Let’s begin with a thought experiment, then we’ll get to the man within the image up there. Say you’ve obtained an unhittable fastball. Each time an opposing batter swings at it, they miss. With such a pitch, you’d wish to hit the strike zone each time. Solely good issues can occur within the strike zone. Both the batter takes and also you earn a known as strike, or they swing and also you earn a swinging strike. Outdoors the zone, you’d run the chance of throwing a ball as a result of the batter lays off it.

Now, say you’ve obtained an especially hittable fastball. Not solely does it by no means generate a whiff, however each time the batter swings at it, in addition they hit a house run. You’d by no means wish to throw that pitch within the zone. You wouldn’t wish to throw it a lot in any respect. Perhaps you’d use it as a waste pitch to vary the batter’s eye stage, simply each every now and then, and thus far exterior the zone that they wouldn’t even take into consideration swinging at it. However that’s it.

These are excessive examples, however my level is to introduce the idea of a perfect zone price. Each pitcher (and each pitch) in baseball lives someplace between these two extremes. Some pitchers ought to reside within the zone and a few ought to keep away from it. All types of things inform that preferrred zone price: how doubtless the pitch is to earn a whiff, how doubtless it’s to earn a chase, how onerous it tends to will get hit, whether or not it tends to will get hit within the air or on the bottom, the way it interacts with the remainder of your repertoire, the way it performs in several places, how effectively you’re in a position to find it, how assured you’re feeling in it, the depend, batter, state of affairs, and so forth, and so forth.

Recently, the calculus has shifted considerably. The zone price has been rising as a result of pitchers have been instructed to goal down the center and belief of their stuff. In 2024, 49.6% of all pitches had been within the strike zone and 26.5% had been particularly within the coronary heart zone (the world at the very least one baseball’s width from the sting of the zone). Each of these numbers had been the best charges we’d seen for the reason that begin of the pitch monitoring period in 2008, and each of these numbers had been surpassed in 2025, when for the primary time ever, extra pitches hit the strike zone than missed it. Throughout baseball, the best zone price has elevated.

That brings us to Tanner Scott. Coming into the 2025 season, Scott regarded just about unhittable. From 2023 to 2024, he put up a mixed 2.04 ERA and a 2.53 FIP. He even had six scoreless postseason appearances, too. He ran a strikeout price over 31%, a groundball price over 50%, and a hard-hit price beneath 27%. He earned tons of whiffs and tons of chases. Scott’s sport had only one flaw: He walked too many individuals. He tremendously minimize down on the walks in 2023, however they bounced again in 2024. Coming into final yr, he had a profession stroll price of 12.6%. Amongst pitchers with at the very least 300 innings pitched, that was the Seventeenth-highest profession stroll price of this century.

So, forward of the 2025 season, Scott signed with the Dodgers for a bajillion {dollars} and minimize out the walks. In 2023 and 2024, he posted a mixed 51.9% zone price. Within the first half of 2025, he was at 56.7%. That’s an infinite soar, as Michael Baumann famous in an article titled, “Tanner Scott, or an Impostor Who’s Stolen His Id, Is Throwing a Ton of Strikes.” Scott didn’t stroll his first batter till Could 5. That was by design. “We’re asking him to fill it up a bit extra,” assistant pitching coach Connor McGuinness informed The Athletic a number of days later. “He’s not increasing the zone, which might result in extra miss, usually, and attempting to get these weaker outs because it goes by way of.” By Could 16, Scott had a 1.74 ERA and a pair of.51 FIP. It was a hit story, however you understand in addition to I do what occurred subsequent.

Even by way of mid-Could, amid all that success, issues regarded a bit totally different beneath the hood. Scott’s groundball price and strikeout price had fallen. His hard-hit price had risen by an enormous margin. These numbers caught as much as him in an enormous method. From Could 17 on, Scott ran a 6.27 ERA and 5.76 FIP. Towards the tip of June, he even tried going again to his outdated, zone-avoidant methods. From the primary half to the second, his zone price fell from 56.4% to 47.1%. It didn’t assist. The strikeout price by no means ticked again up despite the fact that the stroll price did. He additionally began giving up tons of homers. Issues obtained ugly.

Under are warmth maps of Scott’s pitches in 2024 and 2025, courtesy of Baseball Savant. Although Scott went again to lacking the zone once more in the course of the second half, the distinction in his strategy is apparent to see.

Scott throws a four-seamer and a slider. The four-seamer rises and has about six inches of arm-side run. The slider stays on airplane and has about six inches of glove-side break. It’s a basic mixture, and in 2024, Scott’s gameplan was easy: Preserve the ball down and to the glove facet. He threw each pitches proper on the nook, low-and-in to righties and low-and-away to lefties. In the event that they swung, they whiffed or drove the ball into the bottom. In the event that they didn’t swing, they’d have an opportunity of drawing a stroll. As a result of it takes 4 walks to attain a run, the plan labored fairly effectively. Scott wasn’t afraid to raise the fastball for a whiff on the prime of the zone, however simply as typically, he went for that low nook. His preferrred zone price was low.

That modified in 2025, at the very least for some time. Scott began throwing each pitches greater. He elevated the fastball extra and stopped going for the nook. The common slider location moved towards the nook, however unexpectedly it was more likely to be contained in the zone than beneath it. Each pitches had been in additional hittable places.

At the very least in principle, one good thing about the 2025 strategy was that the pitches would tunnel higher. In 2024, each the fastball and slider tended to finish up at identical spot. That meant the four-seamer, with its induced break, needed to begin out decrease than the slider, and that distinction in launch angle may need made them it simpler for batters to inform them aside. In 2025, although, the 2 pitches appeared to have the identical launch angle. When aimed on the identical nook, the slider would nonetheless break extra towards it, whereas the fastball would rise and catch extra of the plate. Sure, tunneling the 2 pitches made them tougher to decipher popping out of the hand, however it additionally gave batters cause to hope. They knew they may really see a fastball they might hit, so that they hunted it. In consequence, the fastball’s swing price went method up, each inside and outdoors the zone. Regardless of all the additional pitches within the zone, his known as strike price really fell.

As tidy a story as that is, it’s not honest to say this variation in strategy is the complete cause that Scott struggled so mightily. His fastball velocity dropped by half a mile per hour from 2024, largely as a result of his velocity at all times appears to tick up later within the season, and he missed a month as a consequence of elbow irritation simply after the All-Star break. Some mechanical change additionally brought about his pitch motion to shift a bit greater than an inch towards his arm facet on each pitches, which doubtless made his fastball motion extra predictable to hitters. He additionally raised the likelihood that batters knew what was coming, telling The Sporting Information, “I don’t know if I’m tipping or what, however they’re on all the things. It sucks.”

We even have to permit for the impact of randomness right here. Scott’s a reliever with the attendant small, noisy pattern, particularly on balls in play. Whereas his fly ball price and launch angle actually did skyrocket, so too did his price of residence runs per fly ball, and that’s often an indicator of luck. His wOBA was a bit greater than his xwOBA, and Statcast thinks that reasonably than 11 residence runs, he deserved to surrender 8.2.

So we are able to’t simply blame Scott’s location. In truth, each Stuff+ and PitchingBot favored his command higher in 2025 than in 2024. Nevertheless, it’s onerous not to attract the road between elevating your fastball extra typically and out of the blue permitting 9 residence runs on fastballs, the identical quantity you’d allowed over the earlier six seasons mixed. It’s additionally onerous to not see batters going after your fastball far more aggressively and join it to the truth that you’re leaving it in a hittable location extra typically, even when that location grades out higher based on the pitch fashions as a result of it leads to fewer balls. Furthermore, primarily based on the truth that Scott went again to his outdated strategy after he began struggling, it actually looks as if he and the Dodgers blamed the placement on his troubles. Scott has three extra seasons with the Dodgers on his contract, and it’s honest to imagine they’ll give you different methods to attempt to assist him enhance sooner or later. Filling up the zone appears to be on maintain for now.