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| Roy Oswalt |
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Roy Oswalt threw an insane 74 strikes in 95 total pitches vs. Cincinnati on Wednesday, and if he'd thrown just a couple fewer strikes, he might have thrown a no-hitter.
Oswalt in today's game is a mutant, a freak. No-one throws strikes like he does. According to Baseball-Reference, Roy is throwing 76% of his pitches for strikes this year. Compare that to Tim Hudson--who you may have heard is having a pretty good year--at 64%. Or compare the same Kyle Lohse Oswalt faced and beat last night. Lohse may not be all that good, but he did come into last night's game leading the National League in strikeout-to-walk ratio. Yet Lohse still was only throwing 66% of his pitches for strikes.
After seeing all four of Oswalt's hits allowed tonight come on 0 - 2 pitches, you might even ask whether Oswalt throws too many strikes. I'd have no way to answer that question, but I do know that the man pitches backwards: in a world where many of our best, high strikeout, pitchers work to get to 0 - 2 so they can get their hitters to chase something out of the zone, Oswalt does not appear to change his behavior when ahead. If anything, he gets more aggressive.
Like I've said before, there's no-one like him.
| Pitcher | IP | High Game Score | Average Game Score |
| Jennings | 12 | 64 | 58.00 |
| Oswalt | 50 | 76 | 57.86 |
| Rodriguez | 26 | 62 | 54.00 |
| Sampson | 22 | 65 | 49.00 |
| Albers | 14 1/3 | 53 | 42.33 |
| Williams | 35 | 53 | 40.83 |
| High Game Score - | 76, | Oswalt, | on April | 7 | |
| Low Game Score - | 9, | Sampson, | on April | 23 | |
| Game High, Strikeouts - | 8, | Sampson, | on April | 28 | |
| Game High, Walks - | 6, | Oswalt, | on April | 13 | |
| Game High, IP - | 9, | Oswalt, | on April | 7 | |
| High Seasonal K/BB - | 3.00, | Jennings | |||
| Low Seasonal Starter's WHIP - | 1.16, | Jennings | |||
| High Seasonal Starter's WHIP - | 1.74, | Albers |