First of all, forgive me for not being particularly impressed by Barry Zito. Decent outing, yes. And he was pitching on three days of rest. Six innings, zero earned runs, five hits, and a couple of walks. Not bad, eh? But only one strikeout. Furthermore, per Brooks Baseball, of the 78 pitches he threw, just three resulted in swinging strikes. Going back to his last start, that's now a total of 11 swinging strikes on 186 pitches, or roughly 5.9%
Rest assured, he won't be able to sustain this success with that kind of whiffing ability. Super-small sample size and all, but the 5.9% is actually considerably worse than what he's maintained over the last few seasons. He had an 8.1% mark in 2010.
In his next start, on July 7, he had one of the best performances he's ever had as a Giant: eight scoreless innings, seven strikeouts, and most importantly: zero walks.
As I noted that night:
August 2, 2009. Entering tonight, that was the last time Barry Zito had pitched in a game without walking a single batter. It's been a while, eh?
His last no-walk game in which he had more than five strikeouts? Well, you'd have to go all the way back to July 7 of 2007 for that one.
Point is, that Barry Zito we saw out there tonight was special. That's really good Barry Zito.
Fresh off rehab, he'd gone three consecutive starts, totaling 21 innings with just three runs allowed. And only three walks. Still, he'd had just 11 strikeouts in that span; and his swinging strike rate up until this point had been 6.7%, still the lowest of his career. So it was hard to believe he'd sustain that kind of success.
Now's the part where I remind everyone that Barry Zito is great for a fifth starter, and in reality, he's a slightly-below-average pitcher -- at least, if the last few years of his performance have anything to say about it. The one underrated aspect about Zito is his durability (with the exception, of course, of that freak foot injury). The guy's made 30+ starts in each of the last ten seasons, one of the reasons he's a valuable guy at the back-end of a rotation. He's paid too much, yes. But he doesn't suck, per se.
