THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Taking Nate’s word for it that the best pitchers are worth 6-8 runs a season, that is a crap load in terms of a pitcher’s overall value.  That is basically taking .25 to .5 run off their ERA, which is huge.

Then again, and maybe Tango can answer this, did he take into consideration that pitchers tend to bat in low leverage situations (I assume) and almost never when there are runners on 1st, or 1st and 2nd, unless there are 2 outs (even the good hitting pitchers usually bunt, which is incorrect, BTW), and if true, how much of does that impact win value for those 6-8 runs?

Good point about the leverage.  I only looked at a few careers for pitchers, and it looks to be around an LI of 0.90.

I think -0.125 to +0.250 in ERA is about right.

I think a couple of interesting follow up questions occurs from this.

The first is if and if so how much this hitting costs, i.e. are the good hitting pitchers that Nate found been able to convert that “extra” hitting ability to extra $$$ compared to other pitchers with equivalent pitching but who are worse hitters.

If fairly priced (which I suspect it is not) each of those pitchers on Nate’s top ten list should be earning an extra million a year or two and you know what they say. A million here and a million there, after a while it starts to add up to real money.

The other interesting thing is if there is anything in the training regimen that could be done (by NL clubs) in how they develop their pitchers so that they “lose less” of the hitting potential that I belive a lot of them had when they were younger. (Assuming this can be done without hampering their development as a pitcher of course.)

#3 - Interesting point on pitchers losing their hitting ability. In the past I was statisticain for a summer league, so I had a chance to see some of these guys when they were still amateurs.

Shawn Hillegas hit like a pitcher when he was a teenager, but Pete Vuckovich was the best hitter in the league. In both his age 18 and 19 seasons (1971-72), Vuckovich led the league in victories and strikeouts, as well as the triple crown of batting average, homers and rbis, playing shortstop when not pitching (his arm fell off ten years later). Vuckovich reached the majors in four years, but never hit better than a typical pitcher.

"Why Pitchers Can’t Hit,” an article published by Silver on Slate a few years ago: http://www.slate.com/id/2099612/

There is no doubt that pitchers who hit well or poorly do not have their salaries reflect it, by and large.  Teams just don’t think in quantitative and linear terms like that.

There is also no doubt that teams do not much care about whether their pitchers can hit or not, judging by the way they consider a pitcher AB a “throwaway AB” and the way a lot of pitchers approach their AB (as if they don’t really care), and run out ground balls.

Of course teams should care about their pitchers hitting and running the bases.  And of course they should have their pitchers take BP.  They just don’t because they don’t.  They don’t do lots of things that they should.

That could be one way that smart teams can get value in signing and trading pitchers, no?  Go for the ones who don’t pitch all that well, but can hit!  Hey, maybe I am wrong and that is why Jason Marquis, despite being a lousy pitcher, is still playing and making a lot of money.

And yes, Marquis has always been known as an excellent hitter.