David Laurila speaks with Darren O’Day about how he became a submariner who works up in the strike zone. He thought outside the box after a conversation with Garrett Anderson. Anderson told O’Day that against a side-armer, he looked for a pitch up he could hit:

“But I thought about it for a while; I started to think about it in a trap-door kind of way. If he wants to hit something up, then why don’t you exploit what he wants to hit? Why not see if you can throw something at the top of the zone, or just a little bit over the zone, that he’s going swing-and-miss at?

“Through experimentation — again, this was before the data was really there for everybody to see — I found that I had a lot more swing-and-miss at the top of the zone, and I also had a greater margin for error. As a low-arm-angle guy trying to get an opposite-handed batter out… that opens up the bottom of the zone against lefties, because they just can’t isolate on down and away.”

FanGraphs.com

As usual with a Laurila interview, the whole discussion is well worth your time.