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THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

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Monday, July 09, 2007

100% certainty

By Tangotiger, 01:33 PM

What happens if you take the best pitcher in baseball and give him only one pitch to throw (and that pitch is not Mo’s cutter)?  That is, how much of pitching is the quality of the pitches and how much is the selection (mixing up) of the pitches?  Unfortunately, no one is crazy enough to do that, to actually tell the batter that he’s going to throw nothing but fastballs.  According to a sample at the ever-impressive USSM, we have something close.  Felix Hernandex, a veteran pitcher already with unlimited potential (he’s 21 years, 3 months old !), throws 59% of his pitches for fastballs.  But, if you look at his first 10 pitches in each game ("establishing his fastball"), he throws 84% fastballs.  That is 3.6 SD from his mean, and is therefore highly significant.  He’s not telling the batter what he’s doing, but he’s coming awfully close.

His season totals are: .277/.326/.421
His 1st inning totals are: .358/.404/.528
His pitch 1-25 totals are: .345/.383/.517

(17) Comments • 2007/07/12 • SabermetricsPitchers
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