THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Ah… this is something we’ve been arguing about all season at Royals Review. I’d say most frequent posters there (myself included) think he’d be more useful to the team as as starter, but the team seems (as in most other things) to show little imagination in this respect, probably for the usual reasons. As their website shill put it, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” As if the Royals weren’t broke…

No reason to have a guy save 40+ games if you can’t even break .500

He needs to be a starter. Once the Royals are competetive, they can a closer (if they really need to have someone identified as a closer), but until then, they need to win more games, not save ones that are doing them any good.

Just eyeballing some PITCHf/x data here, but I think there’s a distinct difference between a guy like Mariano and Soria.  I don’t think Soria is ideally suited for a relief role as Mariano is.  Soria has four pitches, while Mariano, as you implied, is mostly a one-pitch pitcher with that cutter.

Soria has an excellent curve - which is mostly 12/6 (so he can use it effectively against both RHB and LHB), a terrific slider, a good fastball, and a solid change.

If I were the Royals, I don’t think it makes much sense at all to keep him as a reliever given what you said and given that his repertoire is what we would expect to see out of a starting pitcher.

Is there any research that suggests that young pitchers (U-28) are more susceptible to injury from overuse when they convert from RPs to SPs? 

Obviously Joba’s woes last year aren’t enough of a sample size, but I’d be concerned about the impact of jumping from ~70 innings to 160+ in one year, especially for a guy who is relatively young.  I’d also be concerned about radically altering any pitcher’s training/preparation regimen, which a reliever/starter conversion inevitably does.

So if you believe that Soria is more likely to be seriously hurt in ‘09 by becoming a starter, that’s a powerful reason not to make him an SP.

(I personally don’t know if there’s any data to suggest that, or even if there’s enough relevant samples in the last 15 years to analyze such a thing).

"Unless you think he is ideally suited for relief, like say Mariano (i.e., his ERA would jump by more than 1 run if turned into a starter)”

Is there any evidence that there even are pitchers ideally suited for relief?  As far as I’m concerned, the only pitchers ideally suited for relief are those that aren’t among the top five on the staff.

Ok, I don’t entirely believe that.  There may be some pitchers that physically can’t manage 100 pitches in a night.  And there are probably some pitchers with abnormally large platoon splits that could be decent as a starter, but more valuable if you could protect them against lhb or rhb.

Typically though, when someone says a pitcher is ideally suited for relief it’s because either A) he has a very limited repertoire or B) he had poor results as a starter and good results as a reliever

A) has never made much sense to me.  If a batter was going to figure out Rivera’s one pitch seeing him three times in a game, then Rivera wouldn’t have been dominant for more than a decade now.  Do batters forget how a pitcher throws after the game is over?  Do they only figure it out after making an out or reaching base, but not if they’re in the middle of a 10 pitch at bat?

B) has obvious selection bias issues.  Pitchers with poor results become relievers.  Pitchers with poor results who were good enough to be given a chance to start in the first place are also going to regress up a lot.  The inverse is also true of course

When there was some controversy about Papelbon’s role, Nate Silver made the point that he was more valuable as an A+ reliever than a B- starter.  It always seemed to me that he just was a young pitcher that made the leap from B- pitcher to A+ pitcher around the time management decided to put him in relief

Then the Blue Jays would be foolish to not convert Scott Downs into a starter?

No reason to have a guy save 40+ games if you can’t even break .500

He needs to be a starter. Once the Royals are competetive, they can a closer (if they really need to have someone identified as a closer), but until then, they need to win more games, not save ones that are doing them any good.

I don’t know that it makes any difference where the team is at (in terms of projected wins or chances of making the post-season), as far as whether a particular pitcher should be a closer or starter.  I don’t even think that the value of a closer is much different on a team that wins or loses a lot of games, assuming that the manager is not waiting for a 9th inning lead to use that closer (which would be even more silly for a team that hardly ever HAS a 9th inning lead).

I don’t know of any evidence or research that indicates whether there are pitchers who are more suited for relief or starting.  I have always given the teams the benefit of the doubt in terms of their opinions and perspectives on that, but we all know how often teams do NOT make correct decisions, so that “benefit of the doubt” is on quite shaky ground.

I also know of no research that has looked at injury rates or something like that when a pitcher (young or old) goes from relieving to starting and increases his work load.  The assumption has always been that a young pitcher needs to gradually increase his work load, but who knows.  Maybe that assumption is wrong.  There are lots of things that “seem” to make sense, but in the end prove to be wrong.

There are probably some pitchers who can’t handle more than 60 or 70 IP a year, but who knows about that too.  Some of that might just be an excuse for pitchers who either pitch well in relief or have not pitched well as a starter.

As far as repertoire goes, it is conventional wisdom that a reliever needs only 1-2 good pitches and that a starter needs at least 2 and preferably 3 or 4.  I have always wondered about that along the same lines as JBH above.  Again, I don’t know of any research on that.  All of these things can and will be looked into at some point in the future, given the plethora and breadth of data we have available now.

Isn’t the rule of thumb to multiply the relief ERA by 1.25 when converting to a starter? I recall Nate Silver doing that when Papelbon was being shifted back and forth. Can someone point me to a relevant study?

An interesting thing about his repertoire, according to Kalk’s cards (http://baseball.bornbybits.com/2008/Joakim_Soria.html), is that he only breaks out the slow curve on 2-strike counts.  It’s not just a tendency; he saved every single one for a potential K.  Hitters can essentially look for two pitches until then: fastball or slider to RHB, fastball or change to LHB.  That might need to change if he started.

And there are probably some pitchers with abnormally large platoon splits that could be decent as a starter, but more valuable if you could protect them against lhb or rhb.

Take out abnormally large, and you’ve figured it out.  A huge majority of relievers are fastball/slider right-handers who never figured out how to throw a pitch that LH batters can’t destroy.  Their two pitches are great against right-handed batters, but they’ve got nothing against lefties. 

The three pitches that generally do the most to keep opposite handed hitters at bay are the change-up, splitter, and curve, in that order.  Not surprisingly, there aren’t that many relief pitchers who both throw a major league fastball and a good one of these pitches.  There are a few (Soria is one of them), but most relievers are fastball/slider.

If you tried to put these guys in the rotation, opposing managers would just load up the starting line-up with opposite handed hitters and tee off.  Their value isn’t tied to hitters not being able to “figure them out”, but instead, on being able to be selective against which hitters they’re allowed to face.  Starters don’t have that cushion.

"Take out abnormally large, and you’ve figured it out.  A huge majority of relievers are fastball/slider right-handers who never figured out how to throw a pitch that LH batters can’t destroy.  Their two pitches are great against right-handed batters, but they’ve got nothing against lefties.”

My contention is that only the platoon pitchers who are near the border of being worth a role in the rotation should be moved to the pen.  If you’re a righty with a big split, but you’re good enough against lhb that there’s no point in protecting against them, then you should be starting.  A dominant fastball/slider reliever like Brad Lidge for instance should probably be starting.  Do you agree?

David, #19, how would a RH reliever who “gets destroyed” by left-handed pitching be effective overall, unless he is used as a ROOGY? Very few RHRP are used as ROOGY’s. What is the average OPS (or whatever metric) of LHB versus RH relievers?

Managers probably try and get the platoon advantage on relievers more so than on starters.  There are very few teams that are going to “load up” their starting lineups one way or another.  That just doesn’t happen these days.  Do you have any evidence that when RHSP with large platoon splits are on the mound, that teams “load up on LHB” in their starting lineups?  If you do, please share it with us.

Are the platoon splits for relievers that much larger than for starters?

You make an assertion that is on shaky ground I think.

Two things I would like to see to support your contention:

1) Average platoon split for relievers versus starters.

2) Evidence that managers significantly change their lineups against a starter (say, RH) who has a large platoon split.

If a pitcher has a large platoon split, he is probably more suited to use as a LOOGY or ROOGY.  But I just don’t see, in general, how a pitcher with a large split is more suited to regular relief (not as a specialist) than as a starter.  If he has a large platoon split, and is not lights out against same-side batters, he is not going to be effective as either a regular reliever or a starter.  And obviously that means that a role as a reliever is in the cards, since relievers are worse pitchers overall than starters anyway.

A dominant fastball/slider reliever like Brad Lidge for instance should probably be starting.  Do you agree?

Sure, Lidge has good enough stuff to start in the majors.  He doesn’t have good enough health, though - he was a starter in the minors who got converted to the pen because he kept getting hurt.  That’s a totally different group of pitchers he belongs to. 

David, #19, how would a RH reliever who “gets destroyed” by left-handed pitching be effective overall, unless he is used as a ROOGY?

Selective usage.  There’s a gray area between ROOGY and Pitches To Everyone, where managers mix and match their 7th and 8th inning setup guys depending on what part of the batting order we’re in and who is due up. 

Take Shawn Camp, for instance.  Threw 39 1/3 innings in 40 games and faced 166 batters, so he wasn’t a ROOGY.  RHBs hit .204/.267/.247 against him, while LHBs hit .356/.400/.576 against him.  He posted a 3.21 FIP.  Not surprisingly, Camp is a fastball/slider pitcher. 

As for all the research, it’s something I’m working on.  Hopefully, I’ll stick it up on Fangraphs or USSM at some point this winter.