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Thursday, March 04, 2010
Batter approach based on quality of pitcher
Yowza this has been a good month for sabermetrics, and it’s only March 4th. Let me offer what Dave Allen is doing here as exactly the kind of thing sabermetrics is all about. Pinnacle of sabermetrics = convergence of performance analysis and scouting observations.
Are you kidding me? Wow. I mean, that is just, wow. On first pitches that are in the strike zone, Chipper Jones will swing 75% of the time against a great pitcher, all the way down to under 50% against a crappy pitcher. (And he seems to have no discernible pattern in the other counts.) So Chipper will protect the plate like crazy against a great pitcher because:
a. to get behind a great pitcher is crazy
b. he might not get another good pitch to hit
He’s not so aggressive with a crappy pitcher because he figures the crappy pitcher might beat himself, and he might catch a good pitch to hit anyway.
Is this common among great hitters?
Dave, just fantastic stuff. Beautiful.
Really makes me thing what new things we might learn if we got more insightful commentary from the elite players of the game, rather than cliches that most interviews produce.