Here is an article by Carson Cistulli, following Matt Hanna, in which he finds that you can identify high-K, dominating pitchers more easily by looking for pitchers who can induce fishing outside the strike zone. 

As Jeff Sullivan has emphasized, K/9 can be predicted from swinging-strike percentage.  (Don't get carried away; you can predict a hitter's AVG too, from his K rate, but it's not an absolute.)

In essence, Hanna found that he could better predict "Expected Strikeout Percentage" by weighting "fishing" strikes against "in the zone" strikes.

A pitcher is doing better, if he can induce batters to fish for pitches outside the zone, than if he can throw a few balls by hitters.  Part of this, I would say, is because nobody can consistently throw balls by major league hitters.  But some pitchers can force "confused" hitters to swing at the wrong pitches.

...........

That's counter to Carson's intuition, as he commendably admits, that the great pitchers would be throwing the ball by hitters in the zone.

Is that what you would guess?  That the Lincecums and Big Units and Bedards of the game, rack up 10 K's by beating hitters fair and square?

Or would you guess that K's occur because hitters are confused?

............

It's been a Bill James posit, since the 1980's, that you do not beat major league hitters by challenging them.  You beat them by getting them to swing at fastballs outside the strike zone, or by getting them out in front of breaking pitches.

So Hanna's find is very pleasant from Dr D's standpoint.  Hitting is timing, said Teddy Ballgame.  Pitching is upsetting timing.

.

=== Deconstructing David, Dept. ===

The punch line:  Aardsma is a pitcher who throws the ball by hitters inside the zone.

Aardsma had the #5 swing-and-miss rate in all the majors for pitches thrown inside the strike zone.   Go to fangraphs.com > leaders > pitchers > relievers > plate discipline > Z Contact %. 

That is consistent with what the eyes report -- that in 2009, Aardsma threw the ball by hitters, macho-against-macho, here it is hit it.  Better than practically any pitcher in baseball.

.

=== Power vs. Power Dept. ===

Aardsma's ability to seduce batters into fishing for balls they couldn't reach?  He was about average there, assuming that they swung.  Batters rarely swung at Aardsma pitches outside the zone, but assuming that they did, they made contact normally.

So, there's one more thing that makes Aardsma a thrilling reliever.  Here it comes.  Let's see you do something with it.

This doesn't make me nervous that Aardsma will stop striking people out, but it does ratchet my HR nervousness even higher.  He's not fooling anybody.  He's just beating them, so far.

.

=== Fire and Ice Dept. ===

Brandon League, by the way, induces far more swings outside the strike zone than most pitchers, and when they do swing, they miss it a lot.

That's a tough doubleheader.  Batters know they can't touch his changeup.  They go up there telling themselves to lay off it.  Then League throws it down, out of the zone, and they fish anyway.

League might throw 96-98 mph, but his fastball is nothing compared to his changeup.  A pitch run value of 5 is sort of like a batting average of .472.

Cheers,

Dr D