Filter posts by...
Pitchers
Monday, October 06, 2008
Bill James, in what will surely be an article to appear in the next Gold Mine, looks at the issue of whether the Power or Finesse pitchers perform better in the post-season. He does his typically enjoyable study of matched pairs, where he proceeds to select 100 power pitchers and 100 finesse pitchers (they match in a variety of ways, except in K and BB). They match up quite well in the categories he selected. He also notes:
But the power pitchers had averaged 183 strikeouts, 76 walks; the finesse pitchers had averaged 107 strikeouts, 57 walks. The two groups were nearly even in terms of home runs allowed (a few more for the power pitchers), but the finesse pitchers had given up, on average, 18 more hits. 18 more hits, 19 less walks, one less homer. . .the same results overall.
As you guys know, I’m big on simply doing K minus BB, per PA. And just looking at the bolded part, you can see that I think the two groups are biased. I responded:
Read More
Friday, September 19, 2008
Somebody greases his elbows…
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Recently, MGL and David Gassko did a presentation of defense (pitching and fielding) at MIT. MGL sent me his powerpoint presentation (2 MB). I converted it to HTML without all the nice pics and formatting, so for those interested, here you go.
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
As you know, I am in the camp that believes that all MLB pitchers should start off in the bullpen as long-men, with some spot starts, and, with rare exceptions, only enter the regular rotation no earlier than their 23rd birthday. Since Pedro was so in love with super prospect David Price, why not do it right now?
Monday, August 04, 2008
Joe Posnanski strikes again:
One way to measure a pitcher’s dominance might be simply to look at two ratios — ground-ball-to-fly-ball and strikeouts-two-walks. Would that give us a list of the best pitchers? So, I multiplied those two numbers, multiplied the whole thing by 10 to give it a nice big feel, and I like the list. The statistic definitely needs some tinkering, but this is a good starting point.
Brad Ziegler, in case you are wondering, scored a 103.6 Ziegler number, which is fabulous. Here, though, are the best pitchers in baseball by the Zieglers…
And here’s Joe’s Ziegler article.
Friday, July 25, 2008
By , 10:28 PM
The Mets blew a 3 run lead in the 9th after taking Santana out after 8 innings and 105 pitches. Whoop de doo! A team blew a 3 run lead in the 9th. Call in the National Guard!
So now we have to listen to everyone, including our friend Joe Sheehan at BP, tell us how “pitch counts” have just gone too far.
I have no idea (and I doubt that anyone else does either) how much limiting pitches thrown by young or old (or in between) starters helps to prevent injury or even to improve overall performance. In fact, I (we) have no idea whether it helps much at all.
But we do know that relievers, as a general rule, are much better than starters (you guys know what I mean). We also know that as the game goes on, as a general rule, starters get less and less effective because they get tired and because batters get to see them more and more.
We also can assume that at some point, letting any pitcher throw too many pitches, either in one game, a series of games, in an inning, in a season, or perhaps even in a career, will increase his chances if injury. That, I think, is obvious. Now, whether that point is 100 pitches or 120 pitches is not so obvious, and it probably, like most things, isn’t a “magic point” anyway, and certainly varies among pitchers.
Why do we tend towards a 100 pitch limit for pitchers? First of all, it is NOT a 100 pitch limit for pitchers. The average pitcher is 108, some are 85 (like Maddux at this point in his career) and some are 117, like Livan and Zambrano. But 100 is a magic point only because it is a round number and it is in the “common sense” ballpark. It might as well be 94 or 106, but those are not round numbers. Using 100 as a ballpark number is the same reason we buy 4 yogurts at the grocery store and not 5, and the same reason that golfers say that a putt is 8 feet or 12 feet and not 7 feet or 13 feet. We like round numbers and we like even numbers for some reason.
Anyway, since we know that starting pitchers lose effectiveness as the game goes on, and we know that relievers are particularly effective for one inning at a time or so, can we PLEASE stop this debate about how many pitches a starter should or should not throw? Until and unless teams have only 6 or 8 pitchers in their bullpens (rather than the 12 they have now), just leave your starter in there until you have a better option in the pen, period. If it is close, take your starter out when he is tired or when he has thrown a lot of pitches and you don’t want to risk hurting him even if you don’t know how many pitches that is (before you risk hurting him). If you have crappy relievers, leave your starters in there a little longer. If you have a good pen, take your starters out as early as you can. If your starter is crappy, let him pitch 4 or 5 innings (or 6 if you have a big lead or are down a bunch) and call it a day. It really is no big deal.
But let’s please stop all this yapping! Santana is a 3.50 (in a 4.50 average league) pitcher on the average. After 105 pitches and 3 or 4 times through the order, he is probably a 4.00 pitcher. Surely the Mets have some relievers who are in the same ballpark (4.00 pitchers), and they do (of course). So take Santana out or leave him in. It is no big deal. With him in, you will blow that lead 5% of the time (or whatever it is), and without him, you will blow the lead 5% of the time. Just stop whining about it. Please.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
By , 07:34 PM
Mark Shapiro, the GM of the Indians, was chatting in the booth today during the CLE/SD game. He seems like a real smart guy. The Indians are a very good organization, so that is no surprise. He was talking about bullpens, and the TV announcers asked him why bullpens were so unpredictable. His answer was two-fold. One, he said, that there might be a bounceback effect, whereby relievers who pitch well are overworked and may be less effective the next year, and vice versa for relievers who pitch poorly. I did a study on that a while ago, which suggested that that is not the case, although, to be honest, I don’t think my conclusions were definitive. Shapiro did not seem to sure about that either.
The second reason he opined, was right on the money. He said that because relievers only pitch 70 IP at the most per year, that teams make a lot of mistakes in terms of evaluating them. While he was on the right track, he also should have mentioned that when we compare bullpen performance from one year to the other, we are comparing two sets of performances both of which have a lot of noise. By definition, that would create lots of unpredictability.
I have mentioned this concept before, and I think it is an important one: There is a big difference between 550 IP (about how many IP relievers pitch per team per season) thrown by 10 or 15 guys (the number of relievers per team) and 550 IP thrown by one pitcher, in terms of the variance of performance. A huge difference actually. When people think of variance, they tend to focus on the total sample size rather than the sample sizes of each player, where the performance of each of those players is pretty much independent of one another.
Anyway, I am going to answer the question of, “How do you build a bullpen?” which seems to be such a difficult and illusive answer, at least according to baseball insiders. It is not. And of course, I am not really sure what they mean by “build a bullpen.”
1) Find halfway decent starting pitchers that you think are also suited or even better suited for relief, and turn them into relievers.
2) Stop rotating relievers in and out of the major leagues, based on short-term performance. Keep evaluating your reliever projections, including your pitchers in the minors, using sabermetric techniques, and your scouting reports, and use them to determine who stays and who goes.
3) Sort your relievers according to their projections, and make sure that your better relievers get more high leverage situations and that your worse relievers get fewer high leverage and more low leverage situations.
4) Resist the temptation to use your better relievers when you are losing by 4 or 5 runs (or more), on order to “stay in the game” and resist the temptation to use your better relievers when you are up by 4 or 5 runs (or more) for fear of losing the game. Use your worse relievers in low leverage situations, period.
5) Use you righties and lefties wisely. In fact, each reliever should NOT have just one projection. They should have one projection versus RHB and another versus LHB. Use those to determine who comes in when. Also, rather than having just an “ERA” type projection for each pitcher, classify pitchers according to high or low K, BB, HR, and GDP (basically G/F ratio). Use those also to determine who comes in when, depending on the game situation.
6) Of course, us your ace in more IP per season, and use him in multiple innings when you can, and use him any time the leverage is high, regardless of whether it is a save situation or not.
7) Bring in relievers as early and as often as possible, especially when your non-ace starter is on the mound.
That is how you “build” (and use) a bullpen. It is not that hard.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Dave Smith posted this list, of pitchers 2004-2007:
Pitcher,Team,Date,Inning,Pitches
Wandy Rodriguez,HOU,20070801,1,55
Erik Bedard,BAL,20040908,2,51
Chad Durbin,CLE,20040826,1,51
Josh Beckett,FLO,20050501,1,51
Wayne Franklin,SFN,20040824,1,50
Jaret Wright,ATL,20040817,1,50
Derek Lowe,LAN,20050920,1,50
Jason Bergmann,WAS,20070405,1,50
I’m sure someone at Retrolist will go through these games and tell us how they did for the rest of the game. One would think that these pitchers are exhausted and would not be pitching well, if at all, in the next inning. I’m shocked that the totals are this high.
I’d be in favor of a rule that allows a pitcher to be removed after 40 pitches in one inning, but can be optionally brought back in the next inning. This would have to be specified at the time of the switch. This is similar to an emergency runner for someone who can not run out his homerun. Or, simply force the pitcher from the game after 40 pitches in an inning. Yeah, yeah, I know all about “being a man”. Often, that’s the same as “being an idiot”.
Anyway, can someone show the PITCHf/x of that 2007 game. Was his fastball slowing down during the inning?
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Some great data by Pizza, on the relationship between pitch counts and performance. If the numbers look low he notes: “Again, these numbers are lower than might be expected due to some of the methodological problems I ran into. If I have a moment I might try to correct for it.”
Regardless, the pattern is fairly plain to see. Roughly speaking, it looks to be almost 2 wOBA points per 10 pitches thrown. There are roughly 33 pitches thrown per time through the order, so that gives us an average change of roughly 6.5 wOBA points, each time through the order. In The Book, table 82, I show that each time through the order shows a difference of 8 wOBA points. So, fairly close.
Pizza: can you add a parameter for “time through the order”? Table 80 makes it seem like there is a definite jump each time. Perhaps your results are smoothed out what may be a staggered effect.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Such very cool data. I’ve always set the change in pitcher usage at around 1982/1983. That’s when the starters were on a different usage pattern, and closers were on a different usage pattern. That was my guess anyway. If you look at the chart, the percentage of starts of 3 days and 5 days criss-crossed during 1979/1980. And if you look at the 5+ days, the percentagejumps and plateaus from 1977 to 1987, and then another jump/plateau 1988 to 1997, and finally our current one from 1998 to present.
However, if you look at the % of starts of 3 or fewer days of rest minus % of starts 5 or greater days of rest, you get a wildly enormous transition from 1973 to 1981, after which, a plateau from 1982 to 1986, then another transition from 1987 to 1991, a plateau from 1992 to 1997, and a jump/plateau from 1998 to present. This is what I remember, and I think it better describes the changing pattern of usage.
Studes, maybe you can add a new chart that shows just those three lines, the “3 and fewer”, “four”, and “5 and more”?
Monday, March 17, 2008
Originally, FIP was simply a linear regression of Voros’ more complicated system. It correlated at r=.99 or some high number. Later on, I ended up figuring out privately what Kevin Harlow did publicly. And Tom Tippett in a throwaway line essentially confirmed the same thing (go all the way to the bottom, and page up a little bit):
Clemens struck out 1355 more batters, but if he hadn’t, some of those batters would have reached base, and some would have been retired in other ways. If his strikeout rate had been at the league average, it’s possible that he would have allowed another 125 walks, 35 homers, and 320 more hits on balls in play. Using Palmer’s run values and reasonable assumptions about the distribution of those hits among singles, doubles, and triples, those strikeouts are worth about 250-280 runs.
And 2710/1355 = 0.20 runs. Hopefully, the derivation by Kevin and Tom is enough to explain the basis of FIP.
I don’t remember if I linked this ever, so I’ll do so now. I can’t tell right now if he’s handling the out issue properly (is he using regular IP, or adjusted IP?), etc. The basic form is the following:
+1.40 runs: any homerun
+.33 runs: any walk, hit batter, line drive
-.10 runs: anything else
-.30 runs: any strikeout, infield popup
For your average pitcher per 9 innings, you’ll have something like one homerun, 9 walk-types, 9 strikeout types, and 20 other PA. That gives you roughly 0 runs relative to average (someone here can give you more precise numbers).
The main point I want to bring out is that if you want to extend FIP, you can throw in infield popups with your strikeouts, and your linedrives with your walks, always following the form of:
(13*HR + 3*BB - 2*SO)/IP + constant
Friday, March 07, 2008
I introduced my salary scale last year. It works fantastically well. There’s nothing “black box” about it. You can create your own. It’s just very basic. Vince Gennaro introduces something similar, but instead of WAR, he simply uses the pitcher’s role. Does his conform to mine? Let’s see:
Read More
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Gassko throws in this nugget:
But what stands out most is that, after controlling for all these other variables, every pitch thrown before age 26 knocks off half an inning in the latter half of a pitcher’s career. That is a pretty huge effect. Consider, 100 extra pitches a year—just three pitches a start—means 55 fewer innings pitched down the road.
An inning is roughly 16 pitches. What David is suggesting is that for every extra pitch thrown prior to age 26, a pitcher has 8 fewer pitches of mileage after age 26. This is a rather startling revelation, and is begging for more study. As I’ve shown, regardless of how many pitches are thrown at ages 25-28, you should expect the same number of pitches at age 29-32:
Of the 96 warrior pitchers born between 1935-1958, they faced an average of 3777 batters at ages 25-28, and followed that up with 2692 batters at ages 29-32 (a 71.3% retention rate). The pitchers born from 1959-1974 faced an average of 3470 batters at ages 25-28 (that is, babied by 307 batters over those 4 years), and followed that up in their ages 29-32 years with 2648 batters (76.3% retention rate). Both groups of pitchers, the “overused” legendary pitchers and the “babied technology” pitchers both ended up facing virtually the exact same number of batters at ages 29-32!
A breakdown by earlier age classes seems to be in order.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Chris O’Leary
(Hat tip: studes.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Gassko takes a look.
I’m not crazy about removing pitchers at extremes, based on the thing you are actually selecting from. It creates a selective sampling issue. As David said, this isn’t the last word, so I’d treat this study as a first pass look at it.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
This is a cut/paste from a Baseball-Fever post I made, which I don’t think I posted here. In response to someone who said “Although this would make a 300 K/150 BB guy better than a 195 K/50 BB guy, which I’m not so sure I agree with”. Here’s what I did:
Read More
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Beats me. I did a mini-test. I started off with the PAP at BP’s site.
I selected the 90 pitchers with the most pitches thrown in 2005, reasoning that these pitchers would reasonably be expected to be pitching in 2006 based purely on talent. From those 90 pitchers, I selected the 30 pitchers with the most “stress” (defined by BP as PAP points divided by pitches thrown), and the 30 pitchers with the lowest stress, and the 30 middle pitchers.
I was interested to see how many pitches each group threw in 2006.
Read More
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Article by MGL over at Hardball Times, including a very lengthy treatment of regression toward the mean.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Discussions centered on the impact to the team, bullpen, player, on what happens when a starter does or does not go deep, and how to evaluate the player.
Here’s the post from MGL that is kicking this off:
(Note: the first few posts below were moved here from another thread.)
Read More
from Amazon
Recent comments
Older comments
Page 1 of 70 pages 1 2 3 > Last »Complete Archive – By Category
Complete Archive – By Date