THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

This means that batters must be swinging at ALOT of curve balls in the dirt, something like 35% of the time.  Doesn’t sound right at all.

Did you ever watch Tony Pena hit?

Isn’t this just saying that it’s better to throw strikes than balls?  Then looking at the part of the graph in the strike zone only… perhaps the umpires are having trouble correctly judging the strike zone and are calling more of the near upper and lower limit strike zone pitches balls.  I would think most of the run values on that chart are based on the run value of a strike vs a ball.  Would be interesting to see it broken down by BIP, pitch taken, and pitch swung at.  Perhaps he is doing this, I didn’t bother to look at his page.

Yes, you definitely want to see it broken down by taken, swung at, etc.  As well as by count.  Huge difference between a hanging, get-me-over curve ball at an 0-0 count and at 1-2 when the batter is looking for an off-speed somewhat.  Huge difference between a curve in the dirt at 0-2 and 3-1.  Plus it is true that umpires will miss the call A LOT at the margins on curve balls, so for example, we don’t know how much of that high strike is the batter swinging at a hanging curve or the umpire calling it a ball.

This is a depressing comment:

“...I didn’t bother to look at his page.”

Please bother.

***

Agreed with MGL.  There are many parameters, and Max is giving us the initial view of it.  The stuff that Max and Dave Allen have been doing is giving us lots of potential for actionable items.

** Please bother.

You have your life, I have mine.  You have time to bother, often times others don’t.  Funny how #3 agrees with #2, then you only acknowledge #3.

Tom, I did a few sanity checks that helped me remove some inconsistency before publishing, but I missed the run value of curves in the dirt.
I’ll check out if something went wrong SQLing or if it’s an oversmoothing issue (I had some of that previously, thus I should have been more alert).

Yes, there’s a lot more to do on the subject!

Xei: I agreed with all of post 3, and agreed somewhat with your post (from
“I would” to “Perhaps").  There’s nothing “funny” about it.

“You have time to bother, often times others don’t.  “

If you have time to bother to write in this blog, and you have the time to read and respond to posts in this thread, then you should take that time, and read the article instead.  You will be better off for it.

This applies to EVERYONE by the way (including me and MGL), not just you.  It is simply insane to think that your time is so valuable that it is better spent teaching us your opinions, than learning from documented evidence. 

Ideally, it’s a teach-and-learn cycle where Max shows us the evidence, we read it, try to make sense of it, ask him for more breakdowns, and he does more work, etc.

Hopefully, you ignored my post, and read Max’s article instead.

Only thing I am guilty of is commenting on an article in which the only portion I read was the three or so paragraphs that you posted.  If I treated my college thesis this way, instead of my passing hobby, then I’d agree.  If what I did was a sin, then please cast stones my way.  Didn’t mean to let you down so much.

Perhaps I was also a little too honest in my admission of said sin.

Anyways, keep up the good baseball work.  I read the whole book you guys wrote and am waiting for Part II.
vr, Xei