THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

"You couldn’t have selected a worse spokesperson to talk about pitching much better on 3 days rest.”

Sure you could. You could have selected one of the many pitchers who pitch worse on 3 days rest.

What was his ERA or RA splits?  Surely, Marichal himself and 99% of the world is going to judge him on that before they judge him on his OPS against…

Juan Marichal
3-Days Rest R/9: 3.36 (2.85 ERA)
4-Days Rest R/9: 3.33 (2.78 ERA)

Jim Palmer
3-Days Rest R/9: 3.02 (2.73 ERA)
4-Days Rest R/9: 3.17 (2.88 ERA)

So Marichal is delusional.

Not to mention that Marichal’s 3-day starts came disproportionately when he was younger and in a lower run environment.

How about wins and losses?  They probably judged themselves as much on that as ERA.  I’d guess its probably the same given the ERA similarities.

Guy says the 3-day starts came disproportionately when he was younger and in a lower run environment.  That would also suggest they came disproportionately when he was younger and better.

So probably they are showing that Marichal pitched a little bit worse on 3 days rest.

Ben:  I think that’s probably right.  But I should clarify that I just looked at a few of his early seasons, where he had more 3-day starts by about a 2:1 ratio, and then at a few of his later seasons in which it was the reverse (many more 4-day starts).  And ERAs were clearly lower pre-1969 than afterward.  But I have by no means looked at this carefully enough to say what the difference would be with proper controls for age and league ERA.

In the case of Marichal and Palmer, they weren’t commenting on their results as much as how they “felt”.

And considering the relatively similar outcomes with pitching on either 3 or 4 days of rest, aren’t we ignoring how much more value Palmer and Marichal gave their teams by pitching on 3 days rest and throwing more games that season?

JP: I don’t think we are ignoring anything.  That really wasn’t the issue in regards to Marichal’s statement.  Yes, if pitching performance is the same on 3 and 4 days rest, and your lifetime innings is not affected by the 3 days rest (i.e., bigger candidate for early blowout), then certainly 3 days rest is preferred.

The issue was solely on what Marichal said.  He said he felt better and he had better control, or some such.  But, does it matter how he felt or what he thinks, if the result is that he had the same output?

JP:  Again, you need to account for when pitchers went on 3- vs. 4-days rest.  At his peak, in Palmer’s 3 CY seasons, he was going mainly on 3-days rest.  The ratio of 3-day to 4-day starts was 2.8.  But for his career the ratio was 1.7, suggesting most of his 4-day rest starts came in his pre-peak and post-peak years.  We can’t say Palmer was as or more effective on 3-days rest without accounting for that.

Devil’s advocate…

Perhaps he did have better control/feel of his pitches on 3 days rest, but some other attribute (velocity? stamina?) was better on 4 days rest to provide a counterbalance.

How many pitches did Marichal need / per game to put up the stats (3 days versus 4 days rest?

How many walks did Marichal issues / per game “”?

Etc.

Aren’t these the details that would contribute to an analysis of whether he had more control on three days’ rest, which is what he says he felt?

Data is here:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?n1=maricju01&year=Career&t=p#dr

Excluding IBB and sac bunts, Marichal had 4.2% walks per PA on 3 days rest and 3.8% on 4 days rest.

He faced 31.0 batters on 3 days rest and 31.3 batters on 4 days rest (excluding IBB).

If all we had was a limited number of starts, then I’ll defer to him as to how he felt and what that means for performance.  But, we have performance data of enough starts that we don’t need to know how he thinks he might have felt.

It sort of reminds me of the comments you’d hear from Pedro Martinez the day after a start. If he was masterful, the next day he’d say he really didn’t have control of his pitches, was feeling ill or something similar. If he bombed, he’d say he felt great, could locate all his pitches, etc. In his case, it was probably all just PR, but still…

I certainly agree with Tango, that he is implying that he pitched better (ERA-wise or whatever you want) on 3 days rest and not just that he “felt better.” Who cares how he felt.

I also agree that both of these pitchers were so good that if they could pitch even a little worse on 3-days rest and it wouldn’t affect their longevity (of course no one really knows about that), then obviously that is the best strategy (pitching on 3 days rest) for their team.  You are getting almost 1.25 for the price of one!