These starting pitchers are allowing hard contact most often

The harder the ball is hit, the more likely strong offensive production occurs. Good pitchers, in addition to limiting walks and generating strikeouts, limit hard contact, both in terms of velocity off the bat and batted ball angles. Pitchers often generate weak contact through a good pitch mix to keep a hitter off balance, or by executing good command and deception within their pitch mix.

Pitchers who are inconsistent with their command and deception or lack a strong pitch mix often are prone to getting hit harder. Think fat mistake pitches located in a hitter's wheelhouse that get punished.

When hard contact is allowed, run scoring becomes more likely. Via statcast, pitchers that allow batted balls with exit velocities of 100+ mph with a positive launch angle give up hits roughly 70% of the time on those type of batted balls, a .715 batting average against. OPS against soars to over 2.000 with that type of hard contact.

These starting pitchers have allowed the most hard contact in baseball this year, as defined by batted balls with exit velocities of 100+ mph with a positive (greater than 0 degree) launch angle. The data has been collected using the statcast database.

1. Patrick Corbin, 83

2. Marcus Stroman, 75

3. David Price, 71

4. J.A. Happ, 70

5. R.A. Dickey, 67

6. Robbie Ray, 67

7. Mike Leake, 66

8. Dallas Keuchel, 65

9. Jered Weaver, 65

10. Matt Wisler, 65

11. Yordano Ventura, 64

12. Julio Teheran, 64

13. Mike Fiers, 63

14. Chad Bettis, 63

15. Wei Yin Chen, 62

16. Jeremy Hellickson, 62

17. Jerad Eickhoff, 62

18. Nathan Eovaldi, 61

19. Aaron Sanchez, 61

20. Mike Pelfrey, 61

21. Rick Porcello, 60

22. Chris Archer, 60

23. Masahiro Tanaka, 59

24. Jake Peavy, 59

25. Hisashi Iwakuma, 58

26. Martin Perez, 57

27. Kendall Graveman, 57

28. Edinson Volquez, 56

29. Sonny Gray, 56

30. Brandon Finnegan, 56

31. Colin Rea, 55

32. Jake Odorizzi, 55

33. Dan Straily, 55

34. Chris Tillman, 55

35. Matt Moore, 55

36. Ervin Santana, 55

37. Jon Niese, 54

38. Johnny Cueto, 54

39. Bartolo Colon, 54

40. Michael Pineda, 54