THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Hitting by Count

Using Tom Tippett data, here is the wOBA, BABIP, and the big three, by count, excluding IBB:

Count	 wOBA 	 BABIP 	 AVG 	 OBP 	 SPC 	 PA 
At 3-0	 0.700 	 0.343 	 0.401 	 0.946 	 0.789 	 3,113 
At 3-1	 0.564 	 0.307 	 0.347 	 0.681 	 0.604 	 9,013 

At 2-0	 0.405 	 0.299 	 0.343 	 0.343 	 0.622 	 4,882 
At 3-2	 0.403 	 0.303 	 0.230 	 0.470 	 0.380 	 22,183 
At 1-0	 0.388 	 0.310 	 0.342 	 0.342 	 0.574 	 13,604 
At 0-0	 0.381 	 0.311 	 0.341 	 0.341 	 0.555 	 21,312 
At 2-1	 0.375 	 0.301 	 0.332 	 0.332 	 0.551 	 10,118 
At 1-1	 0.362 	 0.301 	 0.328 	 0.328 	 0.522 	 15,772 
At 0-1	 0.346 	 0.299 	 0.321 	 0.321 	 0.487 	 16,002 

At 2-2	 0.214 	 0.288 	 0.195 	 0.195 	 0.308 	 22,761 
At 1-2	 0.188 	 0.282 	 0.177 	 0.177 	 0.260 	 23,762 
At 0-2	 0.177 	 0.282 	 0.167 	 0.167 	 0.243 	 13,198 

As you can see, a huge difference in BABIP on 3-0 counts and 2-strike counts.

More importantly in most cases however are “pass-through” counts, which I’ll present here:

Through Count	 wOBA 	 BABIP 	 AVG 	 OBP 	 SPC 	 PA 
Through 3-0	 0.570 	 0.313 	 0.296 	 0.725 	 0.496 	 8,131 
Through 3-1	 0.490 	 0.303 	 0.281 	 0.587 	 0.475 	 16,168 
Through 2-0	 0.443 	 0.301 	 0.290 	 0.494 	 0.493 	 25,514 
Through 3-2	 0.403 	 0.303 	 0.230 	 0.470 	 0.380 	 22,183 
Through 2-1	 0.372 	 0.296 	 0.262 	 0.397 	 0.433 	 37,414 
Through 1-0	 0.371 	 0.300 	 0.280 	 0.382 	 0.459 	 72,841 

Through 0-0	 0.332 	 0.299 	 0.268 	 0.328 	 0.430 	 175,638 
Through 1-1	 0.314 	 0.295 	 0.248 	 0.315 	 0.396 	 68,748 

Through 2-2	 0.290 	 0.294 	 0.207 	 0.304 	 0.333 	 37,782 
Through 0-1	 0.283 	 0.294 	 0.239 	 0.276 	 0.372 	 81,511 
Through 1-2	 0.237 	 0.289 	 0.191 	 0.237 	 0.294 	 45,390 
Through 0-2	 0.212 	 0.287 	 0.183 	 0.207 	 0.275 	 30,514 

If we look at the “at 2-0”, we see the wOBA is .405, which is excellent.  But, the “through 2-0” is .443, and this is Pujols-like.  The “through” counts also capture what happens if the PA doesn’t end at the 2-0 count, meaning that you are still going to be in a hitter’s count.

To show you how incredible Pujols and the old-Bonds are as hitters, if you give an average hitter an automatic 2-0 count, that’s the same thing as starting Pujols at an 0-0 count.  That’s how much of an advantage they have.