Tanner Scott and the Best Zone Charge

Let’s begin with a thought experiment, then we’ll get to the man within the image up there. Say you’ve acquired 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 danger of throwing a ball as a result of the batter lays off it.

Now, say you’ve acquired a particularly 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 alter the batter’s eye degree, simply each infrequently, 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 an excellent zone fee. 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 kinds of things inform that splendid zone fee: how seemingly the pitch is to earn a whiff, how seemingly it’s to earn a chase, how laborious 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 numerous places, how nicely you’re capable of find it, how assured you are feeling in it, the rely, batter, scenario, and so forth, and so forth.

Recently, the calculus has shifted considerably. The zone fee 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 have been within the strike zone and 26.5% have been particularly within the coronary heart zone (the realm a minimum of one baseball’s width from the sting of the zone). Each of these numbers have been the very best charges we’d seen for the reason that begin of the pitch monitoring period in 2008, and each of these numbers have been surpassed in 2025, when for the primary time ever, extra pitches hit the strike zone than missed it. Throughout baseball, the best zone fee has elevated.

That brings us to Tanner Scott. Coming into the 2025 season, Scott appeared 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 fee over 31%, a groundball fee over 50%, and a hard-hit fee underneath 27%. He earned tons of whiffs and tons of chases. Scott’s recreation had only one flaw: He walked too many individuals. He drastically reduce down on the walks in 2023, however they bounced again in 2024. Coming into final yr, he had a profession stroll fee of 12.6%. Amongst pitchers with a minimum of 300 innings pitched, that was the Seventeenth-highest profession stroll fee of this century.

So, forward of the 2025 season, Scott signed with the Dodgers for a bajillion {dollars} and reduce out the walks. In 2023 and 2024, he posted a mixed 51.9% zone fee. Within the first half of 2025, he was at 56.7%. That’s an unlimited 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 Might 5. That was by design. “We’re asking him to fill it up somewhat 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, sometimes, and attempting to get these weaker outs because it goes by way of.” By Might 16, Scott had a 1.74 ERA and a couple of.51 FIP. It was a hit story, however you already know in addition to I do what occurred subsequent.

Even by way of mid-Might, amid all that success, issues appeared somewhat totally different underneath the hood. Scott’s groundball fee and strikeout fee had fallen. His hard-hit fee had risen by an enormous margin. These numbers caught as much as him in a giant method. From Might 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 fee fell from 56.4% to 47.1%. It didn’t assist. The strikeout fee by no means ticked again up although the stroll fee did. He additionally began giving up tons of homers. Issues acquired ugly.

Beneath are warmth maps of Scott’s pitches in 2024 and 2025, courtesy of Baseball Savant. Though Scott went again to lacking the zone once more throughout 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 aircraft and has about six inches of glove-side break. It’s a traditional mixture, and in 2024, Scott’s gameplan was easy: Preserve the ball down and to the glove aspect. 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 nicely. Scott wasn’t afraid to raise the fastball for a whiff on the prime of the zone, however simply as usually, he went for that low nook. His splendid zone fee was low.

That modified in 2025, a minimum of for some time. Scott began throwing each pitches increased. He elevated the fastball extra and stopped going for the nook. The common slider location moved towards the nook, however suddenly it was more likely to be contained in the zone than beneath it. Each pitches have 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 similar spot. That meant the four-seamer, with its induced break, needed to begin out decrease than the slider, and that distinction in launch angle might 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 similar 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 harder to decipher popping out of the hand, nevertheless it additionally gave batters motive to hope. They knew they may truly see a fastball they might hit, in order that they hunted it. In consequence, the fastball’s swing fee went method up, each inside and out of doors the zone. Regardless of all the additional pitches within the zone, his known as strike fee truly fell.

As tidy a story as that is, it’s not honest to say this modification in strategy is the whole motive 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 attributable to elbow irritation simply after the All-Star break. Some mechanical change additionally precipitated his pitch motion to shift a bit greater than an inch towards his arm aspect on each pitches, which seemingly 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 the whole lot. 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 fee and launch angle actually did skyrocket, so too did his fee of dwelling runs per fly ball, and that’s normally an indicator of luck. His wOBA was a bit increased than his xwOBA, and Statcast thinks that quite than 11 dwelling runs, he deserved to surrender 8.2.

So we will’t simply blame Scott’s location. The truth is, each Stuff+ and PitchingBot favored his command higher in 2025 than in 2024. Nevertheless, it’s laborious not to attract the road between elevating your fastball extra usually and out of the blue permitting 9 dwelling runs on fastballs, the identical quantity you’d allowed over the earlier six seasons mixed. It’s additionally laborious 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 usually, even when that location grades out higher based on the pitch fashions as a result of it ends in fewer balls. Furthermore, primarily based on the truth that Scott went again to his outdated strategy after he began struggling, it definitely 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.