THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Thursday, October 20, 2011

How do leadoff hitters approach the 1st and 9th innings of a tied game?

I took all data from 1993-2010, focusing only when the score is tied, there are no outs, and there are no runners on base.  (Not technically leadoff hitters of the inning, but, I don’t want to say “hitters batting with no outs and bases empty”.)

I then split it up by inning, and by home/away.  Here are the results:
From innings 2 through 8, the home batters made outs at a rate of 98% of the away batters.  In innings 1 and 9, it was 96%. 

If I focus on the K rate, home batters K at 99% of the away batters in innings 2 through 8 (range of 92% to 104%), but in the 1st inning, home batters K only 80% of the rate of the away batters.

This pattern repeats itself with walks+hitbatters: innings 2-8, home batters have a rate of 104% of the away batters, but in inning 1, it’s 119%, and in inning 9, it’s 117%.

So, there’s a decided disadvantage to the away pitcher in the 1st inning, in terms of K and BB.  Whereas the home pitcher has a K and BB+HB rate of 16.4% and 7.9% respectively, the away pitcher is at 13.2% and 9.4%.

For singles, doubles, triples, there’s a slight uptick in singles in the 9th inning for home batters (relative to the away batters), and a more noticeable downtick in doubles and triples.  This is almost surely a function of the fielders playing differently.

The HR rates are a bit more difficult to figure out.  Whereas each batting slot is not that much biased in terms of chance of getting a walk or hit, when it comes to HR, that’s not the case.  So, in order to properly do this analysis, we’d have to account for at least the batting order, if not the actual identity of the players involved.

In any case, I have the full data, by inning, by home/away, by score, by base/out states, by starter/relief, by day/night, (but not by player identity or batting lineup) so feel free to make some suggestions below, and let’s see what we can all learn.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Manager mistakes in the 2011 WS: Game 1

This thread, which hopefully Tango will stick, will be about manager mistakes in the WS. Hence the title of the thread!

It didn’t take very lone, IMO.  With no outs in the top of the first, hit and run with Kinsler on 1st and Andrus at the plate.  I’ve never seen the research, but I have always suspected that the hit and run was rarely a good strategy.  If it were, it would be used a lot more.  There is not a whole lot of game theory to it - it’s not like managers are going to pitch out every time a runner reaches base in order to thwart the hit and run.

Basically you have a batter forced to swing at some bad pitches, which is what happened in this case, and you have a runner who is vulnerable if the batter misses.  Now, I hate the hit and run with a slow runner on first base, since if the batter misses, he is like 50% likely to be thrown out, the number depending on the speed of the runner and his jump.

In this case, Kinsler is an excellent base stealer but apparently he did not get a good jump as he was thrown out by a mile.  A bugaboo of mine is when a runner does not get a great jump just because the hit and run is on and he expects the ball to be put in play.  He should be doing the exact same thing he does when he attempts a steal.  He should assume the batter is not going to make contact…

When to walk a Bondsian-Pujols

Great stuff from Matt.

***

Related articles:
http://www.tangotiger.net/walkbonds.html
Giants on the road:
http://www.tangotiger.net/walkbondschart.html
Giants at home:
http://www.tangotiger.net/walkbondschart2.html

That was done back in 2002.  It probably is due for an update, though we’ve got a great table in The Book.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Summarizing late inning starter and reliever performance…

I realize that lots of people have chimed in or lurked a little with regard to the data presented about starters and relievers pitching in the later innings, especially the 9th, and that the data can be confusing.  In an effort to summarize an analysis of the data, here is what it suggests:

If managers and coaches can tell whether a starting pitcher is “on” in any given day based on how he has pitched in the early and middle innings, we should see gradually increasing performance in the later innings, relative to a starter’s overall performance.  IOW, if we look at all starters who pitch the 7th, we should see a collective excellent performance in 1-6 (otherwise they would not be allowed to continue).  We do.  We see a wOBA against of .322 (23 points better than their seasonal wOBA) in innings 1-6 (and presumably a low pitch count and few runs allowed) when they are allowed to start the 7th.  Presumably their managers and coaches are thinking or saying, “He is pitching well, and his stuff is good today.  We’ll let him start the 7th - at least.”

Since a pitcher’s overall wOBA against is a combination of days when his stuff is good and his stuff is bad, we should see better than average performance in inning 7.  We see, however, a wOBA against of .354 while these pitchers’ overall wOBA is .345, which is almost exactly what we would expect the 3rd time through the order.

So it seems that managers and coaches are not able to tell that their stuff is good that day and they will continue to pitch particularly well, since they don’t.  In fact, if they had let these pitchers pitch the 7th when they were pitching horribly in 1-6, they would have had to pitch the same in the 7th as they did when they were pitching exceptionally well in 1-6, since the two samples have to average to their overall seasonal numbers.  IOW, if they are overall .345 and they pitch at .354 the third time through the order in the 7th, when they have been pitching great in 1-6, they have to also pitch at .354 when they are pitching badly in 1-6, since we expect .354 overall!

For inning 8, we should see the same phenomenon but even stronger.  Since pitch counts are higher and short relievers are now readily available, we should see a manager only let his starter start the 8th when he has pitched even better in 1-7 and the manager believes that he is really “on” that day.  He has to be even more “on” than in the 7th inning since his pitch count is higher and short relievers can now come in to pitch.  In fact, going into the 8th inning, these pitchers who are allowed to pitch the 8th have pitched at a .297 level in innings 1-7!  Surely they are “on”!  So we expect his 8th inning performance to be really better than their overall performance.  While it is true that these guys who are allowed to pitch the 8th have been even better in 1-7 than pitchers who were allowed to pitch the 7th, it turns out that in inning 8, these guys once again, like the 7th, pitch at their expected seasonal levels.  They were at .345 in the 8th and they were .343 pitchers overall.  Again, given that they were pitching the 3rd or 4th time through the order, that is about what we would expect, if there were no predictive value associated with their prior innings.  Remember these numbers, like the .345, are adjusted for the pool of batters in that inning.

Once again, managers simply cannot tell whether their starters are “on” or not, or perhaps there is no such thing as being “on.”

What about inning 9?  Again, we should see the same phenomenon, but even stronger than inning 7 and 8.  Pitchers who are allowed to pitch the 9th pitched at .283 in 1-8.  This time we do see better than expected pitching in the 9th!  Starters who pitch the 9th not only show exceptional performance in 1-8, but they continue to some extent that exceptional performance in the 9th.  They are .330 in the 9th even though they are .342 pitchers overall.  They do around 13 points better than expected (the 4th time through the order, pitchers typically do 1 point worse than overall).  How can they all of a sudden do that in the 9th but not at all in the 8th or the 7th?  Surely managers just don’t let any starter pitch the 7th and 8th yet all of a sudden they decide that only starters who are “on” that day will pitch the 9th?  That makes no sense!

So what is the explanation?  It is simple once we look at how wOBA is recorded in different score situations (whether the batting team is tied, up by a little, up by a lot, down by a little, or down by a lot).  As it turns out, even if the actual quality of the pitching (and hitting) is the same, the wOBA can change radically because of the approach of the batters, pitchers, and fielders, depending on the score in the 9th (or later) inning only and because the wOBA weights are based on average values (across all innings) of the various events.  In fact, we see that for all pitchers in the 9th, including relievers, who actually pitch an overwhelming majority of 9th innings of course, wOBA is much lower when the pitching team is ahead by 2 or more runs, and much higher when the game is tied or the pitching team is ahead by only one run or is losing.  This is evident from looking only at the relievers, who aren’t pitching the 9th inning because they are “on” that day.  They are pitching the 9th because they are primarily closers or late inning relievers in general.  And please remember, when I say that wOBA is lower in games where the pitching team is ahead by a lot and higher when the game is close or they are losing, I mean relative to the pool of batters and the quality of the pitchers in that “bucket.”

So, for example, if in blowouts, the average pitcher (reliever and starter) is a .350 pitcher and the batters are average, then we might see a wOBA of .330 (20 points lower than expected).  If in close games, the average pitcher is a .320 (again, with average batters), we might see a wOBA of .340, 20 points higher than expected.

Here are the numbers in the 9th inning for all pitchers based on score differential of the pitching team.  I’ll only use score differentials when the pitching team is winning so we can use home and road numbers (the numbers for when the pitching team is losing are similar to when the game is close).  Look at the pattern.  It is obvious.  The first number is the wOBA adjusted for the batting pool. The numbers in parentheses are the seasonal talent levels of the pool of pitchers in that bucket.  Remember these numbers are for all pitchers, which are mostly relievers of course, since 90% or so of all PA in the 9th inning are pitched by relievers.

Up 4 or more runs: .325 (.337)
Up 3: .305 (.318)
Up 2: .304 (.318)
Up 1: .318 (.317)
Tied: .356 (.330)

When up by 2 or more runs, wOBA for all pitchers is around 13 points lower than “expected” (seasonal numbers).
When up by 1, it is 1 point higher.
When tied, it is 26 points higher!

So that still doesn’t explain why all of a sudden in the 9th inning, we see starters doing exceptionally well.  It does if you know this one important fact:  Most of the time that a starter pitches in the 9th, he is pitching with a large lead.  In fact, 76% of the time that a starter pitches in the 9th his team is ahead by 2 runs or more.  55% of the time, his team is ahead by 4 or more runs.  Only 9% of the time that a starter pitches in the 9th is the game tied, which is when wOBA is the highest by far, for all pitchers.

Contrast that to relievers.  Only 48% of the time do they pitch with a 2 or more run lead, 27% of the time their team has a 4 or more run lead, and 13% of the time they pitch when the game is tied.  They also pitch considerably more often than starters when their team is losing, The wOBA is also quite high in games (in the 9th of course) in which the pitching team is losing.

And that is why starters seems to pitch so well in the 9th. It is not that they are really pitching well. It is just that the way wOBA is figured it understates what is really happening (the weights of the events are not correct, and other things probably occur more often, like sac bunts and IBBs) in the 9th inning of games in which starters tend to pitch (close games, not losing) presumably because of the approach of the batters, fielders, and pitchers.  Again, we know that the low wOBA against for starters in the 9th has nothing to do with the starting pitchers themselves because we see that when the pitching team is ahead by a lot with a reliever in the game, the wOBA is just as low.  Again, it is just that starters tend to pitch in the 9th when they are leading by 2 or more and relievers tend to pitch the 9th when their teams are losing or the game is close.

In fact, when we look at games in which the score is close, the starters’ wOBA against is around the same as the relievers (relative to their overall wOBA against) and when the pitching team is ahead by a lot, the starters’ wOBA against is also the same as the relievers’.  No difference.  Starters and relievers pitch the same in the 9th relative to their true talent.  Starters do not pitch well despite having pitched exceptionally well in innings 1-8.

A simple but perfectly apt analogy would be this:

Let’s say that during the day wOBA was 10 points higher than at night, given the same pool of batters.  And let’s say that pitchers with blond hair pitched mostly at night and pitchers with brown or black hair pitched mostly during the day.  What would we find?  We would find that blond haired pitchers appeared to pitch a lot better (by almost 10 points) than dark haired pitchers.  This would be an illusion.  We would find of course that blonds during the day pitched the same as brunettes during the day and that both groups also pitched the same at night.

In this case, starters are blondes and relievers are brunettes and night games are games in which the pitching team is ahead by a lot and day games are games in which the score is close or the pitching team is losing.

So, there does NOT appear to be any predictive value to pitchers who have pitched great in 1-6 or 1-7 or 1-8 AND their manager considering them to be “on” that day (I presume) and thus leaving them in the game.  We only saw that in the 9th inning anyway, and it was an illusion created by the fact that starters tend to pitch when they are ahead by a lot and ANY pitcher will have a low wOBA against, presumably because of a non-typical approach by batters, pitchers, and fielders, and relievers tend to pitch in closer games (or losing games) when ANY pitcher will have a high wOBA against, again, presumably because of a non-typical approach by batters, pitchers, and fielders.

I hope I have explained this well…

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Subverting the Intentional walks

As you know, I think 4-pitch walks (intentional or not) are against the spirit of the game.  The idea of called balls was to act as an incentive for the pitcher to throw strikes at the batter.  But, sometimes, the pitcher/manager believes that it is better to throw all those balls than to let the batter get a strike.  Hence, against the spirit of the game.

Now, what if the batter makes life a bit tougher for the pitcher?  The pitcher throws two intentional balls, and on the third one, the batter swings through.  The count is now 2-1.  Does the pitcher still walk the batter?  Since an IBB is usually a very close to break-even decision, intentionally giving back .05 runs by the batter by swinging through on a pitch must cancel out that advantage.  But, as we can figure, the defense is still going to throw an intentional ball 3.

Now what?  At 3-1, the defense is going to throw ball 4.  The batter can’t swing again, as he’d be giving up another .07 runs.  But, suppose he does.  Suppose he swings through at an intentional ball to put it at 3-2.  Then what?  What do you think the defense is going to do?

Similarly, what if the batter intentionally swings through on the first pitch, to put himself in a 0-1 hole.  What do you think the defense is going to do? 

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Starting Pitcher on a great day v Closer

Max Marchi weighs in with a great article.  Read it all.  This is the conclusion:

I looked at games played in the past 20 years, thanks to the invaluable Retrosheet data. I selected all the instances in which the starting pitcher has completed eight innings giving up one run at most. These should be the circumstances when the manager can believe his starter “has it” and can complete the game.

I removed the games in which the offense had provided the pitcher more than three runs. Thus, we are dealing with situations in which the game is still on the line, and the manager should be trying to maximize his chances. (In a blowout the skipper’s choices could be dictated by having to rest the bullpen or wanting to try a young arm.)

The games were then split in two groups: Games with the starter beginning the ninth (STARTER) and games with a reliever beginning the ninth (CLOSER).

Here’s how the two groups fared, with more than 1,000 games represented in each group.

runs        percentage
allowed      CLOSER  STARTER
  0          76     74
  1          14     16
  2            7       5
  3            2       3
  4+            0       1

Looking at the numbers above, the decision on whether leaving the starter in or removing him appears as a coin flip. However, the above table can suffer from selection bias, with three possible sources of bias coming to my mind.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Worst managing ever?

Many of you know how much I hate TLR’s in-game managing.  I think he is atrocious and today he did not disappoint.  I said before the game started to my son and someone I know in the Cards front office that Tony would do something dumb just to show how “smart” he is.  It didn’t take long.  Even before the game, he inserted Nick Punto into the lineup in place of John Jay. Now Punto is probably the better defender than Schumaker at second, but Punto has no bat whatsoever.  My sim estimated that that cost the Cards around 1.5% in WE.

Top of the 8th, Carpenter gets a hit (should have been pinch hit for anyway, but I won’t even get into that).  Furcal bunts which is crazy because Carpenter does not run.  He is one of those pitchers who thinks that all he has to do is pitch.  On almost any bunt other than a great one, he is going to get thrown out at second.  A decent bunt and only because of an error, everyone is safe.

Now, we have the same situation only worse.  Anything but a good bunt to third and Carpenter is likely to be forced at third.  It gets worse.  The batter goes to 2-0 and still bunts!  Hitting away with a 2-0 count, even with Halliday pitching, with the infielders expecting a bunt, is going to be a lot better than a bunt attempt with Carp on second. It is not even close.  I’m sorry I have to say that without presenting any evidence.  Someone can do the analysis if they want.  Just terrible.

Now it is the top of the 9th.  My guess is that TLR leaves Carp in the game rather than going to his closer.  That will be his final mistake unless the game goes into extra innings.  Surely Motte is a better pitcher than Carpenter the 4th time through the order.  Again, it is not even close. If the Cardinals hold on and win the game, it will be despite LaRussa’s terrible managing and not because of it…

Thursday, October 06, 2011

When one smart guy is outsmarted by an even smarter guy

This is beautiful.  Especially since it involves perhaps the two best players since Barry Bonds retired, being involved in a play of “playing the percentages”.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Defensive Indifference with a 2-run lead and only 1 out

A reader brought up the 9th inning of the Rangers/Rays game.

If you are batting down by 2 in the bottom of the 9th, with 1 out, the win expectancies are:
.117 runner on 1B
.129 runner on 2B

The gain is therefore +.012 wins.

On the other hand, if it was 2 outs:
.050 runner on 1B
.052 runner on 2B

The gain is therefore +.002 wins.

So, defensive indifference with 2 outs is fine.  With 1 out?  Not really.

HOWEVER… does closing the hole make it ok to throw away .012 wins like that?  The LI in that situation was 2.7, so this means that you are throwing away .012 * (10/2.7) runs or .044 runs by letting the runner take that extra base.

Can you save yourself .044 runs by closing the hole?  I don’t see how that’s possible.  .044 runs in one PA is huge, equivalent to 30 runs per 700 PA.  You don’t get that kind of benefit by letting the guy take the extra base.

So, I’d like to know more about this play.  Was it really defensive indifference?

Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Terrible managing?

You guys tell me what you think.  In the span of a couple of innings, Tony (I am a genius) LaRussa IBB’s Pence to pitch to Howard (I am not sure that is incorrect) with a runner on second and 2 outs, he allows Garcia to bat in the bottom of the 6th with 2 outs and runners on 1st and 2nd (I’m 98% sure that that is a terrible decision), and he inexplicably IBB’s Ruiz to pitch to a pinch hitter, Ben Francisco…

Monday, September 05, 2011

Re-examining the sac bunt by a pitcher with 1 out and runners on 1st and 3rd

Last night, in the PHI/FLO game, Anibal Sanchez was asked to lay down a sac bunt with runners on 1st and 3rd and 1 out in the second or third inning.  No one batted an eyelash (but me). You see this all the time.  It is SOP.

In The Book, in the chapter on sac bunting (if you haven’t read it, what the heck are you waiting for?), we say that a pitcher should rarely bunt with runners on 1 and 3 and 1 out.  To me, that makes perfect intuitive sense, even from the standpoint of a manager, media analyst, fan etc.  By sacrificing, you give up most opportunities for a run to score on that play (via a hit, sac fly, non-DP ground out) and you give up an opportunity for a walk, even though that rarely occurs.  In exchange, you only move a runner from first to second, which is not that valuable when giving up an out when there is already 1 out (we are going to assume that a sac bunt means one runner advances and the batter is out), which is why a position player, even a poor-hitting one, never bunts with a runner on first and 1 out.  In fact, the average RE (using the 99-03 NL run environment) for runners on 1st and 3rd and 2 outs is .509 and with 2nd and 3rd, it is .574, a pick up of only .065 runs.  So a bunt is not THAT much better than a K or other out that does not advance the runner.

Of course, the manager is scared to death of a DP to end the inning.  How often does that happen?  Well, about half of all ground ball outs by pitchers with a runner on 1st and less than 2 outs are DP’s.  About 30% of a pitcher’s PA end in a ground out, so about 15% of the time, they hit into a GDP.  So basically in exchange for moving the runner up at first and avoiding an inning ending DP around 15% of the time, they give up the chance for a walk, hit, sacrifice fly (and of course an ROE, but that can happen with a bunt also), or a ground out where the runner scores.  Again, this doesn’t seem to me to be a fair exchange.  And The Book says that it is not even close.

Let’s look at the data again - roughly.

We’ll assume that the “successful” sacrifice results in runners on 2 and 3 and 2 outs, or an RE of .574.

What happens if the pitcher swings away? 

First we’ll look at all the positive events.  Here are the frequencies and the resultant RE plus any runs that score:

S .125 1.924 (I am conservatively assuming that the runner on 1st only advances 1 base)
D .019 2.404 (I am assuming, again, quite conservatively, that only one run scores)
T .0013 2.985
HR .0013 3.286
BB .034 1.553
ROE .0075 1.924 (again, assuming runners advance only one base)
SF .058 1.239
Ground out, no DP, runner scores: .105 1.287 (I am assuming that 2/3 of the time, runner scores, and 1/3 of the time, he gets thrown out at home.  I am also assuming that half the time the runner on first advances.)

Now, the negative results:

DP (GDP and other DP, including runner thrown out at home on a fly ball out) .163 0
K .348 .509
Fly out and no runners advance .058 .509
LD out and no runners advance .03 .509
Ground out and runner gets thrown out at home (1/3 of all non-DP ground outs) .052 .437

If we add all these RE up, we get: .741

So, as we suspected, it is not even close!  You are at least (I made lots of conservative assumptions, I think) .20 runs better off not attempting a sac bunt with an average hitting pitcher and runners on 1 and 3 and 1 out.  According to The Book, when pitchers did not sacrifice in that situation, an average of .962 runs were scored, much larger than our expected .741. That is likely because these are the better hitting pitchers, the defense was probably somewhat surprised (resulting in more hits), and the hitting environment was probably high as well.

So how much does this egregious mistake cost teams?  It looks like managers actually bunt around half the time in these situations and that occurs around 1.5 time per team (in the NL) per year.  That is a cost of at least .3 runs per year, probably closer to .4 or .5.  Not much, but still, in the scheme of things, it is a lot. Given that a win costs around 4 million dollars, a manager should be fined $40,000 dollars every time he asks his pitcher to bunt with 1 out and runners on 1 and 3! 

Monday, August 29, 2011

When sabermetric teams go wrong!

Oakland is known as the original sabermetric team of course - at least the front office.  In tonight’s game, they were down a run in the top of the 8th with a runner on second and 0 outs.  The pitcher was Tony Sipp, the lefty, and the batter was Crisp, batting right handed.

Bunting in this situation is probably marginal at best, because you are the road team, and you would like to score more than one run.  As most of you know, I am not anti-sacrifice bunt, by any means.  In fact, this is a great time to execute game theory and sometimes bunt and sometimes hit away.  However, the SS was holding the runner at second, Weeks, very close, to keep him from stealing (the previous runner on second stole third easily on Sipp) and to keep him from getting a big jump on a possible bunt.  At the same time, the 3B was playing close for the bunt. There was a gigantic hole between 2nd and 3rd base.  Given that, I have to believe that hitting away is much the better option.

Now here is the kicker which made the bunt a horrendous play.  The count went to 2-0!  As we explain in The Book, when the count is in the hitter’s favor, especially 2-0, 3-0, and 3-1, it is rarely if ever correct to bunt for obvious reasons. 

So given the hole at SS, the count, the favorable platoon matchup, and the fact that OAK was the visiting team, I don’t believe that a bunt can even be close to being correct, ever, even when considering game theory.

Anyway, Crisp bunted at ball 3, it was a bad bunt, Weeks didn’t advance and OAK never scored.

I have to wonder if Billy Beane or someone else from the front office discusses these things with their manager, Bob Melvin.  I doubt it.  I sure would…

Thursday, June 16, 2011

How low a Leverage Index should cause an immediate removal of a starting pitcher?

Crashburn presents various scenarios.

On one extreme is if the visiting team takes a huge lead in the first inning… do you really want to send your ace out there?  And how long do you want to keep him in the game?

There are two major considerations:
1. The preparation of the starting pitcher for that day.
2. The burning of your bullpen.

For #1, how tough is it on a starting pitcher to not actually pitch the day he was expected to pitch, and then be held back for one or two days?  How much will this drop his true talent level for the next game?  If he turns into a replacement level pitcher in the next game, well, then you may as well use him in the current game instead, since in both cases, he’ll be useless.

For #2, as much as most relievers are fungible, they still can’t be sent out there at will every game.  You still need to manage them as humans with limited number of bullets.

Having said all that, if the LI is under 0.1, and the starting pitcher has thrown 70 pitches, and there’s 5 innings to go, is THAT the point you do the switch?

(Consider the starting pitcher to be an ace, like Doc or Verlander.)

Do NOT give such answers:
- case by case
- can’t come up with rules of thumb
- can’t blank

Those aren’t helpful.  Be helpful, be creative, apply some critical thinking.  Imagine you are writing a thesis.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Chad Billingsley, saberist: “…there’s a lot of luck involved”

Oh, I so love it when the expert players get it right, and they invoke “luck” as the word.  Great job Chad!

Let’s start with the basic: tell me what you know about pitch sequencing.

Well, first, there’s a lot of luck involved. The hitter knows what you have, as far as the pitches and what your tendencies are.

Certain guys are fastball hitters, so you [occasionally(*)] throw backwards in the count to them–that means throw off-speed early in the count and finish them with fastballs or something hard late in the count. Your objective as a pitcher is to keep the hitter off-balance. So you mix the speeds and location.

That’s about as clear an introductory game theory statement as you’re going to get.

(*) If he added the word “occasionally” right here, it would have been fantastic.  I added it in here for him.

***

It varies. For guys who I know won’t swing first pitch, I’ll throw a batting practice fastball for strike one. Just a straight fastball down the middle, 87 or 88 miles per hour. We know that. There’s a 99% chance he’s not going to swing at that first pitch.

Well, that’s bullsh!t Chad.  A 99% chance for some batters to not swing at a straight fastball down the middle at 87 or 88?  Is there even ONE batter in all of MLB like that?  Even pitchers-as-batters will swing at that more than 1% of the time.  And, has Chad ever done that anyway?

If you want to say 70% or 80%… heck maybe even 90% to exaggerate your point.  But do you need to say 99%?  I mean, the take rate on 3-0 pitches is 92%.  Players are extremely predisposed to take at that count.  No one is that predisposed to take the first pitch.

Anyway, sounds like Chad is ahead of the game generally, and might just need to work on his percentages.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Ending the intentional walk, and breakeven profiles

Poz hates it even more than I do.  He has a Pozcast with Bill James, where James talks about it (presumably it’s what we’ve already heard from him, but Poz doesn’t go into it, because he’s pushing the Pozcast… and I’d gladly oblige to listen to it, but I, like most people, am at the office, and I, like many, don’t have a speaker, and if I did, I, like several, would be told to not play that at the office; and I’d read his reader comments, but blogspot is also blocked at the office!).

I agree with Poz. It’s like completely removing Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan from the ice/court, by giving a lesser shooter an extra two feet around him to make the play.  At least in football and soccer, when you double-team, the player is still on the field, and that player is still sometimes involved in the play.  To emasculate Gretzky and Jordan is extremely anti-sport.

Anyway, I’ve talked about this in the past:

Vladimir Guerrero is up at bat. He is prepared to swing at anything close to the plate. Anything! And still, teams will intentionally walk him. Was there a more tension-reducing sight than when Barry Bonds was coming to the plate with 1B open? This is the complete opposite of what should have happened, and was not what the fans paid to see.

The rule is simple: Any 4-0 walk, intentional or not, results in a two-base penalty. If you have a runner on 2B, the 4-0 walk gets you runners on 1B and 3B. If you have a runner on 3B, then it’s guys on 2B and 3B. And, with runners on 2B and 3B, the batter goes to 1B, the runner on 2B stays put, and the runner on 3B scores.

Under this scenario, how often would a pitcher not give the batter at least one strike? Again, fans win, and the players go back to giving us action and tension.

***

Poz also asks how many walks would a batter need to get if all he did was walk and strikeout (and is a terrible fielder).  This is why we have wOBA.  It answers the question pretty clearly.  Since you need to be a league average hitter to be a DH, that would mean that you need a wOBA of around 0.333 (or whatever the league average OBP is).  And with the coefficient of a walk being 0.72 (and the strikeout would be around -.02), then you solve for this:

OBP * 0.72 + (1-OBP) * -.02 = .333

That gives you OBP = .477

So, it’s pretty close to .500.  At .500 OBP (that is, one walk for every strikeout), your wOBA is .350.  So, you can get about 1.10 strikeouts per walk, and still be breakeven.

Now, even easier than wOBA is Linear Weights, where the run value of a walk is around .32 and a strikeout is around .29 (it depends on the run environment).  And .32/.29 = 1.10.  This is why I love Linear Weights. 

And, if you remember, I talked about K-BB per PA for a pitcher as a great way to measure a pitcher.  And a pitcher who strikes out as many as he walks is a replacement level pitcher. 

Therefore, to tie it all in, a batter needs to walk more than he strikes out and a pitcher needs to strike out more than he walks.  In order to not follow that, they need to bring more to the table.  A batter can bring power or a glove or his legs.  A pitcher?  Well, it’s extremely difficult for a pitcher to bring ANYTHING else to the table.  He’s going to have to be an extreme GB hitter to limit “power” (i.e., few HR), or be an extreme pickoff pitcher to limit “legs”, or be able to control balls in play to an extreme extent to leverage his fielders “gloves”.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Ace reliever or starter in the 9th?

I did not realize there was a controversy.

Between 2000 and 2010, there were over 1700 instances in which a starting pitcher completed eight scoreless innings. In nearly two-thirds of those instances, the starter came back out for the ninth. The team allowed an average of 0.45 runs in those innings. Conversely, when the starter was pulled, his team allowed an average of 0.35 runs in the ninth.
...
I ran a fixed-effect regression to predict each pitcher’s linear weights based on his time facing a batter in a game. Essentially, the output showed that the average starting pitcher loses a half-a-run-per-nine in effectiveness each time through the order.

Good stuff from Jeremy.  Are we at the point that saberists and old school managers agree, but the new media has too much numbers to be dangerous?

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Scientific Baseball in 1916

Glove-slap: Joe.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Bunting with Granderson

Larry offers many of the considerations, quotes The Book, and it takes a while to get there, but he also brought up game theory:

We should also consider that it’s not always good strategy to have strong hitters avoid the bunt, particularly when the strong hitter is fast and a good bunter.  According to “The Book”, strong hitters make better bunters because the defense expects weak hitters to bunt and strong hitters to swing away.  When a good hitter is at the plate, on average a bunt attempt can produce nearly as high a run expectancy as swinging away, providing that the defense is not expecting a bunt.  I do NOT think the Mets were expecting Granderson to bunt yesterday!

I think he does a good job overall in forcing the reader to think, to accept that there is a debate, and it’s not open and shut.

I would like to see the following: where do the fielders field when Curtis Granderson is up to bat compared to say Paul Konerko or Billy Butler.  Game theory would dictate the fielders to play in a little bit more with Granderson than with the other two guys, because of the possibility of the bunt (and that Granderson is also faster too… a better test case than Granderson would be a hitter that is the same speed as Konerko/Butler, but bunts more often than those two guys). 

You can look at an extreme situation, like the shift.  The fielders are practically telling the batter that if he bunts down the third base line, he gets a free base (it’s the equivalent of an intentional walk… the intentional hit).  Given that kind of setup, it’s surprising (disappointing) how little the shifted hitters bunt.  So, if they bunt too little on a massive shift, I can see how teams are not going to play in more on good hitters who have shown bunt on occasion.

***

How successful of a hitter does he need to be if shifted with bases empty?  If he’s a good hitter, say +.05 runs per PA, and the run value of an out is about -.18 runs and a single/walk is +.27 runs, then we solve for this:
+.05 = .27p - .18(1-p)
Solving for p gives us
p = (.05 + .18) / (.27 + .18) = 51%

So, pretty much, the batter needs to bunt successfully 50% of the time, in order for the shift to be a breakeven point for him.  Of course, it might be a hard sell to get Ortiz to practice his bunting.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Reason #4,218 why you don’t want a major league manager doing your taxes

http://texas.rangers.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110411&content_id=17643966&notebook_id=17649334&vkey=notebook_tex&c_id=tex

Texas was up 2-0 with 2 outs and a runner on 2nd with Cabrera, a RHB up at the plate and Feliz, Texas’ RH closer on the mound.  Washington, the Texas manager, did what any old-school manager worth his weight in practice balls would do - he ordered the IBB.

Some nifty quotes from the article:

First frick:

“I had to pick my poison, and I didn’t want Cabrera taking us to extra innings,” Washington said. “Martinez is a good hitter and I have respect for him, but he’s not swinging the bat well. He could have caught one and won the ballgame, but I decided to take my chances. I didn’t want Cabrera tying that game.”

And then frack:

“I think the answer is very simple: They did what they felt gave them the best chance to win the game,” Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. “And that’s what you do as a manager. If they felt that was their best chance to win the game, then that’s what they should do. I give them a lot of credit.

In related news, a manager at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi power plant tried to contain the massive radioactive leaks with duct tape.  A senior Japanese government official was quoted as saying this:

“He did what he thought he had to do to give us the best chance of containing the leak.  And that’s all you can ask of your nuclear plant manager.  If he felt that was their best chance of rectifying the problem, then that’s what they should do.  I give him lots of credit.  In fact, I gave him a raise!”

Monday, April 04, 2011

Intentionally dropping a foul ball

Michael does a super job of analyzing the situation here.

The situation is this: in the top of the last inning, the score is tied, there are no outs, and the runners are on 1B and 2B.  The batter has a 1-2 count with the ball in the air.  Do you intentionally drop the ball, keeping the batter at the plate at 1-2, and runners at 1B and 2B.  Or, do you catch the ball, let the runners go to 2B and 3B, and a new batter at the plate?

This is exactly what win expectancy is designed to answer.  Michael starts with the basic win expectancy data, and then looks to try to make adjustments. 

The end result is that the fielder made a defensible and gutsy call to not catch the ball.