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Shohei Ohtani leads MLB in chase rate in 2026 at 29.1%. The top three are Shohei Ohtani, José Fermín, Will Smith, based on Statcast data refreshed nightly from Baseball Savant.
Chase rate (O-Chase%) is the percentage of pitches a pitcher throws OUTSIDE the strike zone that the hitter swings at. It measures a pitcher's ability to entice hitters to expand the zone — breaking balls that look like strikes before diving off the plate, two-seamers that run off the inside edge. League average sits around 28-31%; elite zone-manipulators push hitters past 35%. Unlike whiff rate, which rewards pure miss-bats, chase rate rewards pitch design and tunneling — the deception that makes a hitter commit to a pitch he should take.
Judge, Soto, and Ohtani lead off vs. a Cy Young CPU pitcher. Three outs or three runs — whichever comes first. Real Statcast pitch-by-pitch sim, ~30 seconds. No download, no signup, no card pack to open.
| # | Chase Rate | Player | Team | Position | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 29.1% | Shohei Ohtani | Dodgers | SP | 100 |
| 2 | 23.3% | José Fermín | Cardinals | SP | 65 |
| 3 | 21.3% | Will Smith | Dodgers | C | 84 |
| 4 | 20.8% | Jake Bauers | Brewers | 1B | 85 |
Chase rate complements whiff rate: a pitcher with a high chase rate but modest whiff rate is often one sequencing tweak away from a strikeout spike (the swings are already there, they just need to miss). It is one of the stickiest pitcher skills year-over-year and a leading indicator for breakout relievers.
Data source: MLB Statcast via Baseball Savant, refreshed nightly into the Legends Deck card database. Minimum sample-size filters are applied so small-sample outliers don't distort the top of the ranking.
New to the metric? What is chase rate? → Read the definition, formula, and a worked example.