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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.
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