Chandler Gray 
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By Chandler Gray• Published: • 3 min read

Does First-Pitch Strike Rate Actually Predict Pitcher Performance?

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I posted a while back about how wOBA changes throughout an at bat in wOBA by Count. So I thought an interesting follow-up is whether pitchers who throw first-pitch strikes more often end up with better results the following season.

The Data

I pulled F-Strike% for pitchers who faced at least 100 batters in both 2024 and 2025, which left 329 pitchers. The predictor is their 2024 F-Strike%. The outcomes are their 2025 FIP and 2025 wOBA allowed.

FIP focuses on strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, and home runs (the outcomes pitchers control most directly, independent of defense), per FanGraphs’ formula. wOBA allowed includes everything: contact results, batted ball outcomes, the works. I ran scatter plots in R with F-Strike% on the x-axis and a linear regression line on each. I’m still learning R, so take the presentation for what it is.

Results

Scatter plot titled “Does First-Pitch Strike Rate Predict FIP?” with 2024 F-Strike% from 40 to 60 percent on the x-axis and 2025 FIP from about 2 to 8 on the y-axis. The 329 points form a wide, diffuse cloud, and the regression line slopes gently downward from roughly 4.6 to 3.5 FIP across the range.

2024 F-Strike% vs. 2025 FIP: R² = 0.032.

Scatter plot titled “Does First-Pitch Strike Rate Predict wOBA Allowed?” with 2024 F-Strike% from 40 to 60 percent on the x-axis and 2025 wOBA allowed from about 0.19 to 0.47 on the y-axis. The same 329 points scatter broadly, and the regression line declines only slightly from about 0.335 to 0.307.

2024 F-Strike% vs. 2025 wOBA allowed: R² = 0.014.

Is it predictive?

The direction is right in both cases. Pitchers with higher F-Strike% in 2024 tended to post slightly better numbers in 2025, but neither relationship is strong. 3.2% and 1.4% of explained variance leaves a lot of room for other factors.

Whether that means F-Strike% is genuinely not that predictive, or whether a single season of data is just noisy at the pitcher level, is hard to say from this alone. F-Strike% itself may not be especially stable year to year, which would also limit how well it can predict anything. That would be worth checking separately.

Based on these numbers, F-Strike% is probably not a useful forward-looking stat by itself. The direction makes intuitive sense to me, but R² values of 0.032 and 0.014 are low enough that you would not want to lean on it as a predictor.

wOBA By Count