Sky wrote a piece on Cormier's odd peripherals - mostly to dash our dreams - but his mention alerted me to Cormier's plate discipline numbers as well. So far, Cormier's O-Swing% is at a career high 32.2% -- that means batters are chasing almost a third of Cormier's total pitches outside of the strike zone. Cormier's Contact% is another career high, this time at 87.3% -- hittable! - but most of that is coming way of the O-Contact%, which is a peculiar 73.4%. In fact, Cormier is only throwing 44% of pitches inside of the strike zone, the rest of the time he's throwing borderline strikes or balls and the hitters are putting them in play.
Can Cormier sustain success this way? Well, I really don't know, because I've never seen anything quite like this. Looking for comparables, I decided to zone in on:
- High O-Contact%
- Zone% under 50%
- Shaky peripherals
Here's how Cormier stacks up with those from 2008:
Player | GB% | OS% | OC% | Zone% | K% | BB% | HR/FB% | FIP |
Cormier | 54.9 | 32.2 | 73.4 | 44.4 | 7.6 | 5.7 | 3.7 | 3.78 |
Lopez | 59.6 | 26.1 | 68.5 | 48.4 | 15.4 | 11 | 10.3 | 4.19 |
Villone | 37.8 | 23.6 | 68 | 45.1 | 21.8 | 16.2 | 7.4 | 4.51 |
Beimel | 47.4 | 27.3 | 66.7 | 47.8 | 15 | 9.8 | 0 | 3.3 |
Aardsma | 44 | 23.1 | 65.5 | 46.7 | 21.5 | 15.4 | 7.8 | 4.65 |
Sarfate | 41.2 | 23.9 | 64.2 | 46.5 | 24 | 17.3 | 9.5 | 4.88 |
Grilli | 42.4 | 24.7 | 63.1 | 48.9 | 21.4 | 11.8 | 2.8 | 3.24 |
Romero | 61.5 | 27.1 | 58.8 | 41.6 | 20.4 | 14.9 | 14.3 | 4.66 |
Without going back further, I have no idea how Cormier will perform moving forward, but right now he's probably the oddest thing about this season.