THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Are we to assume this is a major-league batter of average ability?

Probably, but at the very least make sure it’s the SAME batter facing each machine.

Since the machine always throws a strike, we can eliminate walks from the calculation:

75: .400
80: .450
85: .500
90: .500
95: .380
100: .250

75: .700
80: .600
85: .500
90: .400
95: .200
100: .100

75: .510
80: .500
85: .490
90: .480
95: .460
100: .440

75: .750
80: .650
85: .440
90: .400
95: .330
100: .240

75: .400
80: .370
85: .340
90: .300
95: .280
100: .300

75:  .500
80:  .500
85:  .510
90:  .520
95:  .470
100: .400

75: .610
80: .655
85: .685
90: .555
95: .425
100: .320

Wow, answers all over the place.

I’m interested in why people think that if the fastball is too slow, that the hitters would do worse?  Is it that you think the optimum speed for a hitter is 85mph, and it’s the “slow in, slow out” idea? But we’ve all seen the HR derby.

Curious as to what you guys are thinking…

If a BP pitcher *could* throw meatballs at 80 or 85mph, maybe they would.  But I don’t think they can.

75: .550
80: .550
85: .500
90: .450
95: .400
100: .350

But boy is there a high degree of variance depending on the player.

What would be an interesting way to test this would be to look at how Vlad does on pitches in this box against pitchers who don’t change speeds much.  Vlad seems to assume every pitch is going to be within this 2x2 box anyways, so when it actually is, we have a pretty near match to the test question!

Some things to consider:

75 mph is probably slow enough that a major league hitter with good contact skills/bat control can practically place it where he wants to if he knows it’s a 75 mph strike in the same spot.  So he should be able to out-hit any shift or even a straight-up defensive alignment. 

But at some speed threshold - my guess is 85 mph - nobody(?) could do that, so BABIP would probably appear normal at velocities of 85-90. 

So basically my assumption would be that a good hitter’s BABIP would be insanely high against 75 mph fastballs in the heart of the zone.  This should be enough to offset the better power numbers that could be produced against better velo, right?

75: .650
80: .650
85: .650
90: .600
95: .500
100: .350

75: .700
80: .675
85: .650
90: .600
95: .550
100 .500

Tim Wakefield throws a 75 MPH FB

75: .500
80: .450
85: .380
90: .330
95: .310
100: .280

75:  .420
80:  .375
85:  .330
90:  .310
95:  .290
100: .270

My thought on low velocity is that home runs would be down, so balls that have a good launch angle would be caught instead of going out of the park.  I believe this would be especially true on balls hit the other way.

1st post didn’t show, hopefully not a doubl post.

75-80: wOBA would be laughable. It’s the equivalent of a high school pitcher pumping centered fasttball to an average MLB hitter. Let the fireworks begin. Out of 100 pitches, you’re likely looking at 40 or so homers alone, provided the batter can hit in groups of 20 pitches.

85: Possibly higher than the above group.

90: The average MLB hitter would put up All-Star level wOBA.

95: Still well above average.

100: Probably about average, .340.

On centered pitches with known velocity and no threat of changing speeds, batters are still going to do okay.

There’s a reason why location, changing speeds, and movement are so important.

75: .700
80: .600
85: .500
90: .400
95: .370
100: .340

If they know the velocity and the break and only have to worry about location in the zone, professional hitters will tee off.

75—isn’t that basically home run derby?

75: .555
80: .485
85: .380
90: .330
95: .310
100: .275

The Blue Jays used Mike McCoy, a position player, as a mop-up pitcher today. He did throw more than one type of pitch, but his comments afterward seemed applicable to this thread:

McCoy threw mostly slow changeups from 60-76 mph, but mixed in a couple of sliders and topped out with an 85-mph fastball.

He said the goal was to throw the ball slow enough that Boston’s hitters would have a tough time making the adjustment.

“Throwing softer is usually more effective,” said McCoy, who added he once threw 3 2/3 innings in a Minor League game in 2009 after his team ran out of pitchers. “Big league hitters are used to seeing 90 mph and I’m throwing 72-73; they usually get themselves out on that.”

The variance in speed proved to be effective. Crawford hit a weak fly ball to shortstop, Scutaro flew out to left and Drew hit a soft ground ball to second base.

http://atmlb.com/lcyeBu

75: 1.100
80: .900
85: .750
90: .600
95: .450
100: .300

I’m assuming that we have a hitter here who is capable of and is attempting to hit home runs, and that on the slower pitches there is going to be a fairly large percentage of home runs.

75: .841
80: .822
85: .763
90: .704
95: .595
100: .446

I’m assuming they have a decently large amount of time to adjust to this, so the effect of “But I’m so used to having fater speeds, different locations, breaks, etc.” is negligible, and they have more practice teeing off on this stuff. Say, a few weeks is probably enough. If you immediately switched to this, it would be much lower at first.

@ Mike Fast

You’re numbers look a lot like what I had in mind. Thanks.

We’ve all heard about Boggs and Ichiro and their home run prowess in BP. I think it would be a lot like that for 85 and under.

In 87 we went to KC to see Seitzer (from my HS). DET had a guy in BP hit 11 consecutive HR. “Who the heck is that beast?” Mark Salas, if I am remembering the name correctly.

If the goal is to put on a fireworks show, rather than get your swing geared for the game, lots of hitters could light up the pitching machine.

A league average MLB hitter is what? Top 3% of all prosional batters? That is very high quality.

75 1.000
80 .900
85 .600
90 .450
95 .420
100 .340

My thought is that 75/80 are more or less batting practice, so those pitches turn into HR’s a lot.

My second thought is that batters don’t get out because of strikes, but rather from swinging at balls that are out of the strike zone. Since there are no balls out of the strike zone, I anticipate pretty good contact when the ball is hit.

I don’t think there will be too many strikeouts, so I tried to roughly guess what wOBA would be if a batter never struck out or walked and used that guess for the 95mph pitches.

75: .540
80: .550
85: .340
90: .340
95: .340
100: .320

Fun exercise.  I could get better values with a better conversion of batted-ball type to outcome, but this will do for a start.

I was assuming batters at the slower speeds would hit 50% ground balls and that BABIP would be speed-independent.  These are probably bad assumptions for the 75-80 mph ranges.

For 90 mph, Bartolo Colon might be a good model to work from.  (Reasoning: He throws 80%+ fastballs and isn’t a fastball/slider guy.)

I suspect it could make quite a bit of difference how the experiment is conducted:

* Do the batters alternate between machines (randomly?) from one AB to the next?  Or do they get a steady long-term diet of a single machine before they move on to another one?

* Are the AB’s spread out as in normal game conditions (approx 4 or 5 ABs per 3 hrs)?

* How much practice time would the batters have with the machines?  Should we take into account that the batters might “learn” and improve their performance against the machines over the course of the experiment given enough ABs?  (If so, should our estimate reflect the end state after such improvement has played out?)

* Are the fielders adjusting based on the velocity of the pitching machine and the observed results for the batter?

Here are my [WA]guesses under the most conservative assumptions (random machine rotation, game conditions, no practice time/long-term learning, adjusting fielders):
75:  .700
80:  .550
85:  .450
90:  .400
95:  .350
100: .250

And under the opposite assumptions:
75: 1.000
80:  .800
85:  .650
90:  .500
95:  .400
100: .350

Michael/28’s questions are good ones and do make quite a bit of difference in the answer.  My previous answer was given under the assumption that hitters are hitting pitch after pitch off the same machine and have reached the end state of any improvement from learning that pitching machine’s pattern.

Otherwise, with mixing machines and no time for learning/adaptation, my answers would be closer to the performance of bad pitchers in real game action.

Michael/28: think game conditions.  That means you get one machine for 3 or 4 PA, and maybe a second machine for a 4th or 5th PA.

As for learning, sure, why not.  Are you suggesting a batter can learn disproportionately from one machine compared to the next?

Fielders: sure.  But again, do you expect some disproportion here?

***

Looking at your answers, you seemed to have kept a pretty constant “70%” rate from one set of assumptions to another.

***

Basically, Michael’s answer changes the mean, but keeps the same “shape”.

Good questions, nonetheless.

75: .450
80: .450
85: .475
90: .475
95: .440
100: .420

I think the most Home Runs/hardest hit balls would come from the 85-90 mph pitches.  I don’t think there would be a big difference between all of them, though.  Change of speed and movement is the hardest part of hitting.  Give any major league hitter 100 mph fastballs down the middle and they give up Pujols-like numbers.

Yes, my guess was that any disproportional effects would be minimal or non-existent.

100mph would be a really interesting test case and maybe the best opportunity to observe otherwise (because that’s the one pitch speed hitters rarely see either in-game or during BP).

For people who are putting ridiculously low numbers for the 95 and/or 100 mph range: consider pitchers like Zumaya and Aroldis Chapman. 

Zumaya’s fastball in 2009 was -0.94 runs below average per 100 pitches.  That is with 19.8% of his pitches not being fastballs.  Imagine if the hitters knew that would be 100% fastballs instead of 80% and the opposing hitting numbers would be even better. 

Same goes for Chapman this year.  83% of his pitches were fastballs, yet his wFB/C is -0.83 with an avg speed of 97.8 MPH.

Josh/33: Good point, but I’m curious to what degree those poor fastball numbers can be attributed to high walk rates? Is it possible to get their league-relative numbers for just pitches in the strike-zone?

If I read the post correctly, the pitching machine is guaranteed to get a strike call on every single pitch (thrown to a random location in a 2 x 2 foot square).

[Clarification: Will the machine get a strike call even on those pitches that are up to 3.5” off the plate?] If so, only about half the pitches will be in the center 17” x 17” of the zone and only about a third of pitches will be in the center 14” x 14” of the zone.  So most ABs the hitter will be forced to swing at a pitch that is not within the center 12” x 12” of the zone (unless they can foul off pitches repeatedly until they get one they like)

An interesting experiment would be to use a pitching machine for the home run derby (possibly gaining some sponsorship to boot), and have the following arrangement:

Round 1: 80 mph
Round 2: 85 mph
Round 3: 90 mph

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it would seem to me, as a human, that part of facing a 100 mph pitcher is knowing you still have to be able to get out of the way of a high hard one. Think Kruk v. Unit in the ASG.

It would be fun watching Pedroia take cuts at the 100 mph cockshots. He might literally swing out of his shoes.

I think if folks could just stand in the box as 95 mph goes by, they would gain a whole new level of appreciation for the skill and courage of a ML hitter. Yes, it makes sound as it goes by. I’ve never been more thankful for the DH than the time we faced Juan Acevedo in JuCo. You almost have to laugh when you see it. That there are men that can hit those pitches well is, by definition, amazing.