from Amazon
Friday, June 03, 2011
Hits Per Strike
I appreciate that the authors of this paper were able to figure out that “at counts” are silly almost all the time (pdf). They realize that the performance “at counts” requires us to know that the plate appearance has ended. It seems an obvious concept if you think about it, but most people won’t think about it. So, they get lulled into thinking that “at counts” mean something that they really don’t. Plenty an analyst has fallen into this trap.
Now, the solution is to instead look at “through counts”, which means, given that you are at an 0-1 count, what happens by the time the plate appearance has ended? Virtually all the time you need to talk about counts, you want through-counts. The linear weights (or wOBA) by count is based on through-counts.
The authors of this paper however instead talk about “hits per strike” (and hits per contacted ball). These are partial views to the performance. Without talking about how often they take a called ball, the discussion will always be incomplete.
Therefore, whenever you see one of these papers or articles, and the central point is not about through-counts, then a large hole in the analysis will exist.
Glove-slap: Peter.
