This story references another piece I did yesterday that looked at the likelihood of a player or team scoring once a man reached.  It can be found HERE.  You may recall, or you may not there weren't many comments so if you like this go back and read that, that Bossman Junior was #2 in the AL East in a stat I'm calling Success Rate.  Without getting into the math again, basically he scores 54% of the time that he reaches base.  For comparison, the AL Average for all players is 38% and the Major League Average is 37%.  So thats very good for Beej and a few others of the guys that were above.  You can find all Major League Players at the following downloadable file: Success Rates for Hitting vs. Pitching

Time to roll with the new.  In this installment I wanted to look at the other side of the coin.  What Pitchers/Teams are good at not allowing a man to score after he has reached.  Here is the same analysis as before, only this time, we will look at pitching vs. hitting.  The AL East:

In this case a lower percentage is a good thing.  As you can see the Rays come in third in the division, slightly below average, but nowhere near the disaster zone that is the Yanks and O's.  Think about that for a second, for every runner that gets on base against NY and BAL, there is a 41% and 42% chance that that runner will come home, respectively.  Lets see what else we can glean from this.

Now, the AL East is a very good division, so it is somewhat surprising that only two teams (notice their place in the standings) would come in as better than average at such an integral part of the game.  How does this translate league-wide. 

As you can see the Rays come in at 19th.  At first glance this passes the smell test as you see good pitching teams at the top and bad pitching teams at the bottom.  Good pitchers a) don't allow a lot of baserunners (especially extra base hits)  and b) can bear down once they have runners on.  Another thing that may stand out is all the NL Teams at the top.  Clearly, having pitchers hit will, help you in denying baserunners. 

First, the Rays staff:

Shields and Niemann, are our only starters that are below ML average.  The familiar names in the bullpen show up in the right places (JP/Lance/Shouse good, Wheeler not good).  FWIW, Percy didn't qualify due to PAa, but I just ran the numbers and he is at 35.3%.  The best starters in MLB:

Quite a few real good wheelers and dealers in there.  There is a ton more stuff in here that I would like to show, but I feel this is going on too long as it is.  Feel free to download the workbook:  Success Rate: Pitchers vs. Batters

It is in similar format as the previous article with tabs for different sheets.  Do your own sorts if you want or build upon this.  I don't plan on updating until probably the All Star Break to see who could sustain this (if it is sustainable) and who fell off the cliff.