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A fly ball pitcher is a type of baseball pitcher who produces an above-average number of fly balls, typically by keeping his fastball high up in the strike zone and relying on late movement to cause the batter to be unable to make solid contact. This designation is constructed around the ground ball fly ball ratio, which measures how frequently a pitcher gets batters out on fly balls versus ground balls.

The downside of a fly ball pitcher is that, in a ballpark where the design tends to favor hitters over pitchers (an example being Yankee Stadium), a fly ball pitcher will tend to give up more home runs, resulting in a higher earned run average.

Examples include pitchers Sid Fernandez,[1] Ted Lilly,[2] Chris Young[3] and Marco Estrada.[4]

Notes

  1. ^ Rosenthal, Ken (1995-08-11). "'Sid Sez': He likes the NL better". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2014-09-14.
  2. ^ Cockcroft, Tristan H. (2010-07-31). "Ted Lilly, Ryan Theriot to Dodgers". ESPN. Retrieved 2014-09-14.
  3. ^ White, R. J. (2014-07-07). "Chris Young: Breakout or fakeout?". CBS Sports. Retrieved 2014-09-14.
  4. ^ Lott, J. (2015-09-18). "Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Marco Estrada is getting 'kind of tired' of the doubters". National Post. Retrieved 2017-07-31.


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