THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Fascinating stuff!

"If you swing at a pitch outside the strike zone, pray you don’t make contact.”

The errors on the lines seem to imply that this is not necessarily true for very good or very bad pitchers.

"If you swing at a pitch outside the strike zone, pray you don’t make contact.”

On the first pitch of course and probably any hitters count as well.

There is nothing surprising about that.  That’s like saying:

“If you hit a pop fly or even a fly ball, pray that it goes foul.”

I don’t know that it’s so obvious.  If let’s say you DON’T want to make contact with a pitch that is below the knee, why do hitters go out of their way to alter their swing on bad pitches?

Clearly then what they need to do, given that they have made the decision to swing, is to keep the swing within the area of the strike zone and not chase.  Making contact on a pitch outside the strike zone means the batter chased and altered his swing.

If it was better for him to swing and not chase (i.e., swing through the strike zone and accept an 0-1 count), why does he chase?

So, it may be obvious to you that he shouldn’t chase, but I don’t think the evidence shows that it’s obvious to MLB hitters.

Tango, nowhere in my post is the word “obvious” and that meaning was not my intention. In fact, it is not at all obvious.  But it is NOT surprising.  Two very different (thought related) things…

Here are some comments I made on Fangraphs:

This is great stuff and it is going to take me a while to digest it and formulate some questions and comments.

“So Chipper is really smart and knows that taking strike 1 against a top pitcher is way worse than taking strike 1 against even an average pitcher.”

It is not WAY worse to take a pitch in the zone against a good pitcher. Only a little worse, as you can see from the width of the two lines at the left (good pitchers) and at the right (bad pitchers). That suggests that you want to be a LITTLE more aggressive on the first pitch against good pitchers, but not a lot, everything else being equal.

That also suggests that Chipper’s strategy is NOT nearly optimal for an average hitter even of his caliber and strike zone recognition abilities.

But, that doesn’t mean that it is not optimal for HIM. The only way to get an idea as to whether that extreme strategy that he uses is correct for HIM is to analyze HIS results. And even then, that will not yield a definitive answer, because we can never know what would happen if a batter used a different strategy that he uses, because he may not be “comfortable” with that strategy. For example, it is NEVER correct to always take the first pitch (across all situations), otherwise the pitchers will just throw a fastball right down the middle every time at a 0-0 count, but certain batters like to do that, such as Boggs. Who are we to tell them not to do that. Similarly, it is NEVER correct to always take a 3-0 pitch (across all situations), otherwise pitchers would also just throw a batting practice fastball right down the middle, but some batters, like Piazza (I think) just don’t like to swing at 3-0 pitches.

Then someone said this:

MGL, that’s not correct. Whether Chipper’s approach is correct depends upon the % chance that the first pitch will be in the zone.

If, as i suspect, better pitchers have higher in the zone on first pitch percentages, than his approach may be optimal.

I responded with this:

garik, “his approach” as in swinging more frequently against good pitchers? Yes of course. “His approach” as in swinging MUCH more frequently? No.

You don’t need an analysis to know whether Chipper’s approach is “correct” generically, as in “for all similarly situated hitters.” The fact that he is the ONLY one to do it, even among good hitters with good pitch recognitions skills (presumably) tells you all you need to know.

Do you think that everyone else (of his skill set) is wrong and he is right, or the other way around? Do you think that we can improve Albert, Mauer, Fielder, Braun, Manny, and all the other great hitters by having them approach first pitches like Chipper?

Again, that does not mean that there isn’t something unique about Chipper (other than his basic skills that make him a great hitter) that makes his approach correct FOR HIM, but I sort of doubt that is true. Just because someone is a great hitter does not mean that they could not be even better if they changed something about their approach.

I would be willing to bet that if he shrunk the difference between how often he swings at first pitches against good and bad pitchers, that his wOBA would increase a point or two. I have no way of knowing that of course, and again, that would only true if he is “comfortable” with that new approach.

Great data and good discussion.

What I was most struck by was how much larger the wOBA gap is on balls (red) compared to strikes (gray).  What that tells us is how important it is to make the right decision on pitches outside the zone—the difference between a right and wrong decision on those pitches is huge.  In contrast, when a pitch is in the zone the difference between being right (swing) vs. wrong (take) is relatively small.  Successful hitting is really about laying off the bad pitch.  (If it were more important to swing on strikes, then aggression would be a better strategy and the specific skill of hitting in-zone pitches very hard would become relatively more important.)

*

Another dimension to consider in this analysis is whether there is any benefit to the hitter in seeing more pitches.  We know a hitter “learns” quite a bit between his 1st and 3rd PA in a game against the same pitcher.  It seems plausible that seeing more pitches would increase the learning, though I’m not sure anyone has ever demonstrated this.  So one reason wOBA may be higher when a batter takes strike one vs. swinging at a 1st-pitch ball is that he becomes a slightly better hitter the longer the plate appearance lasts.  And it might even have a small impact on his subsequent PAs in the game, which wouldn’t be captured in Dave’s curves.