Pitching Leaderboards - Starters

These stats are quite interesting but I’m having trouble so far figuring out how to use them to analyze a pitcher. They tell us what pitchers are throwing and how batters are reacting but they I’m not sure how that information can be used to evaluate a pitcher. Has anybody used this information so far to evaluate pitcher quality. Such as, are we better able to evaluate what pitchers will continue to have high strikeout rates or low walk rates? For the past few years saberticians have been moving toward using “peripherals” to better predict future performance than just looking at ERA. Will the sub-peripherals" now allow us to better predict future peripheral performance?

Along these lines what do we make of Joba Chmaberlain? As you note he induces the fewest swings. That may not be surprising considering he doesn’t often pitch in the zone, nor do hitters go chasing after the ones out of it. Nonetheless he seems to be experiencing very good K rates since so many batters simply watch his pitchers go for strikes. Yovani Gallardo seems to have a similar profile as well.

However someone like Johan Santana or Scott Baker are having similarly good experiences with the complete opposite approach. If Joba/Yovani were bad pitchers experiencing bad results then this would make sense but since they all have fairly good final results I’m not sure what to make of these stats.

At the end of the day do these stats simply tell us how and why pitchers ended up with the Ks and BBs that they did; or will they also help us more accurately figure out who will get the Ks and BBs in the future?