THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

If you’re going to defend Carroll, I think you need to acknowledge that he committed your cardinal sin, putting Wainwright ahead of Lincecum.  And while one probably could make a plausible case for Haren, Carroll’s own description of his thinking process is, in several respects, indefensible:  http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9782. 

I think a reasonable case can be made for any of the top 3, so by definition no great injustice was done.  But it’s hard to say Carroll deserves a ballot if this is how he’s going to approach it, much less that he has put “non-traditional” writers in a good light.

I’d like to see a five-deep. Seems like years ago that Frank Viola picked up a bonus because one writer put him third on the ballot.

I was just playing around with a spreadsheet comparing Vazquez and Carpenter. I took the number of innings they pitched against each team, then multiplied that number by that team’s runs/inning. So, Vazquez pitched 33 innings against the Phillies, who would have been expected to score 18.55 runs. Do that for every team, and you would have expected 110 runs in 219.1 innings; Vazquez allowed 75.

For Carpenter, you would have expected 93 runs in 192.2 innings. He allowed 49. (I adjusted the AL opponents expected runs downward to match the NL’s average runs/game, which may or may not be appropriate.)

That gets you to advantage Carpenter, but the Cardinals had a better DER than the Braves, which tends to even matters out. Seems like a perfectly reasonable vote to me.

Carpenter had a great WPA by the way.  Vazquez was great in WPA/LI, but his WPA was not as high as it should be (bad clutch).

Guy: I did not look at Will’s ballot.  Yes, anyone who put Wainright ahead of Lincecum is pretty much wrong, prima facie.

If someone wants to make the argument, please do so.  It’s going to have to rely on the presumption that Wainright had much worse fielding and park support than Lincecum, and/or that he faced tougher competition.

Will: “Lincecum is more dominant, while Wainwright is the better pitcher. The subtle changes Wainwright makes from inning to inning and start to start are more visible in a burst-viewing of condensed games.”

Albert Pujols is the best player in baseball since Bonds retired.  He may not PRODUCE the best each year though.  That’s why you have to look at production and not skill level.

If Will wants to argue that Wainright is “better”, whatever.  It’s irrelevant for the Cy Young.  It’s who produces the most, within the context of his environment.

Basically, you take some baseline pitcher (WHATEVER baseline you personally want to use, be it average or replacement-level or whatnot), and put that pitcher in Lincecum’s and Wainright’s environment, and see which of the two produced more than this baseline guy would have produced.

I’ve always personally hated the “dominant” descriptor. Doesn’t that just mean he’s better? How can one be less dominant, but better overall? I think “dominant” is just used as a way to describe pitchers who strike out a lot of guys. Maybe this descriptions also includes walking less batters, but in using those two, you just described the best pitchers in baseball (guys who strike out a lot of hitters and walk few hitters).

I just don’t see how you can delineate between “better” and “more dominant.”

Re: Carroll’s ballot...I’m not sure this is progress. I can’t decide if selecting a winner based on indefensible and poorly articulated logic is better or worse than just picking the guy with the most wins+buzz. Seems like Carroll is over thinking this.

Anyway, remind me again why we are supposed to care about these awards even when they are awarded appropriately.

In his blog post, Carroll says he asked three players and one scout about Wainwright v. Lincecum.....

WHY?

Why on earth would you ask players and scouts about whom you should vote for? This isn’t a fantasy draft or a real life trade, you’re voting based on past performance. I don’t care if Tim Lincecum was the worst pitcher in the history of the world, if he already pitched better than anyone during the 2009 season, it’s irrelevant.

I wish I would have read Will’s blog post before posting my thread.

I’m thanking him for his out-of-the-box thinking on Haren, but I can’t stand his thought process behind the selections.

Not to mention that Will is a self-admitted numeric-phobic guy.  That really makes him more old-school than anything.

If I had to vote, I’d poll my readers, and go with that.

Tango,

Do you think Greinke was better than Halladay this season? Why or why not?

Boy, how embarrassing.  I changed the title of this thread, because I want to distance myself from Will’s selection process, including the fact he put Lincecum behind Wainright.

I’ve read that Keith didn’t speak too well to defend his selections.  I can’t hear audio from the office, so I’ll have to wait til I get home before passing judgement.

If I defend them, it doesn’t mean I stand beside or behind them.

***

Sunny: c’mon dude.  Greinke.  No explanation needed.

Let’s not be too hard on Carroll.  After all, the man did break one of the most important baseball stories of the last decade…

Tom:

Sunny might be intending to point out that Halladay had a lower xFIP (3.24 vs. 3.36) in about 10 more innings. Shawn Hoffman tried to make the case (can’t find the post now) that Halladay was better.

I suppose this means if Greinke gave up 0 or 30 HR, then our evaluation of him should remain the same?

In order for THAT to be true, then you have to show me that if you map all his flyballs on each of the 30 parks that the resultant number of “virtual” HR is the league average per batted ball.

Until that happens, I’ll err on the side of his actual performance.

RE: Law’s explanation, from what I hear of it, was fine, if a bit standoffish and “arrogant.” But that’s Keith’s writing style on everything, so I’m not really surprised. From reading his stuff in chats and listening to him, he probably used the stats accordingly.

On the other hand, I figured that Carroll had some weird reasoning behind his selections, and I’m glad to see that I was right. He really is more old school with his thinking, but his logic in this case was just as poor as those who didn’t vote for an “odd” candidate.

Yeah, in no way would I consider Will part of the “avant garde” (in terms of performance analysis).  He’s a throwback for sure.  He might get the tag as being a new-age because of his BPro association.

Perhaps Will is still seeing that curveball Wainwright threw to strike out Beltran three years ago.

“I suppose this means if Greinke gave up 0 or 30 HR, then our evaluation of him should remain the same?

Until that happens, I’ll err on the side of his actual performance.”

Tango,

I’m kinda surprised at your position here. Greinke had a worse K/BB ratio than Halladay by over one full K/BB, a lower GB rate by 10 percent, and pitched 10 fewer innings. This “FIP” model has him ranked higher presumably because he gave up fewer HRs.

However, is there any evidence that pitchers can control how many HRs they give up ASIDE from how many flyballs they give up and what ballpark they give them up in? (I.e. have you checked for real effects in population distributions of HR/FB% adjusted for ballpark?).

If there’s precious little to pitchers controlling HR/FB% (after we account for ballpark), it seems citing HRs as a reason for Greinke being the best pitcher this season (given his HR/FB% was 4.5%) is not a whole lot different than citing Win-Loss record for some other pitcher. Or am I missing something?

Sunny,

I think the point is largely that we want to strip away things like defense, runs support, and bullpen success from the contributions of a pitcher. It’s value provided to the team vs. true talent. I would say that Halladay might be the better pitcher, but that Greinke had the better season.

There’s definitely some skill to HR/FB.  How much?  I’m not sure.  Some luck, some skill.

Also, and not to put words in Tango’s mouth, but I think he’d argue that K-BB is better than K/BB as a rate stat.  K/BB probably overrates the really low walk guys (5 K/9 and 1 BB/9) and underrates the 10 K/9 and 4 BB/9 guys.

From Guy in 2006 -

“Through 2005, Pedro gave up 194 HR on 6390 BIP.  For 2002-2006 his OF% was .35, and since your own analysis suggests that GB/OF tendency is a stable skillset, let’s assume that’s his career rate.  Even if he was a bit more of a GB pitcher early in his career, it won’t significantly change the conclusion.  That means 194 HR on 2237 FB or .087 HR/FB (I’ll include any HR on LD, just to be generous).  The 95% confidence interval is +/-.013, so we can say there’s a 97.5% chance that Pedro’s true rate is 10.0 or below.

Repeat for Glavine (300 HR, 12884 BIP, .29 OF%), and we get .080 HR/FB, +/-.01, or a 97.5% chance he’s below .09.  I’m too lazy to figure out the chances that each are truly above average (<.12), but it’s well over 99%.  So, saying it’s “pretty clear” they have this skill actually understates the conclusion we can reach.”

For Maddux, Clemens, and others we see the same thing.  In fact, doesn’t HR/FB correlates about as well as BABIP from year-to-year? And very few vote to completely disregard BABIP prevention as partially skill anymore. 

So the fact that there is some HR/FB ability shouldn’t be in question.  The question is - does Grienke have enough track record to “prove” that his 2009 HR/FB is legit?  If not, how much should we regress?  Or should we just give him the benefit of the doubt with all of it?

I don’t really like Law choosing Vazquez.  Of the 4 metrics I think are most relevent in the Cy Young debate (tRA WAR, FIP WAR, RA WAR and WPA), Carp was ahead in 3 of those.  FIP is great for true talent level purposes, but it strips out a little too much for my taste.

I heard Keith on ESPN here:

http://www.101espn.com/post/26682_the_fast_lane_show_note_thursday_111909/audio

The ESPN guy was a d-ck, trying to summarize Keith’s opinion so poorly.

Keith did a good job talking.

***

In any case, to me:
Lincecum clearly better than Wainright.

Carpenter clearly better than Vazquez.

That’s why I put those two guys on the ballot for The Book readers.

***

Keith says that the Cards fielding team was better, but UZR loved the Giants fielding team, and had the Cards/Braves fielding team both below average.

Not that it matters too much.  There’s a 70-run difference, and the starters make up one-seventh of the IP, so that’s a 10-run swing.

Vazquez was bad in the clutch, and Carpenter was excellent.

***

I don’t like to think about it too much.  I’m happy to leave it that the only two pitcher who you can consider as #1 is Lincecum and Carpenter.

Wow.  I had heard that Law told the show’s producer he would no longer be going on their show, and now I know why.  I’ve heard from a lot of people in St. Louis talking about how arrogant he came off, but listening to that, I really don’t see how one could get the impression that Law was the arrogant one (in that interview, at least).  He seemed to just be trying to explain his reasoning, and the only times he said anything arrogant (like telling the guy he didn’t have the analytical background to question him) seemed like defensive reactions after the hosts made it pretty clear they had no interest in listening to him or trying to understand any of what he was saying or even really discuss it.  At the very least, he was dealing with people acting more arrogant than he was.

I also wonder how many of Vazquez’ starts those guys had watched this year to know he was worse than Carpenter, given that they told Law to get his nose out of a book or spreadsheet or whatever and go watch some games to figure this stuff out.

As for Carpenter vs. Vazquez, I think they’re close enough and there are enough different ways to look at it that I can see how someone could have Vazquez ahead of Carpenter.  Certainly nothing that I think should justify the reaction against Law (or Carroll in the case of Haren over Carpenter).  Particularly after reading some of the articles other voters have written showing the reasoning that are ignored simply because they put down the conventional 3 names in whatever order, I can’t understand getting so worked up over the Law’s process or conclusions.  It does seem like he is substituting the difference between defense-independent stats and ERA for defensive support, which may or may not be the case for a given pitcher, but I wonder how much of that is Law dumbing down the explanation to make it more accessible to a wider audience, or if he is unwittingly lumping luck and sequencing and whatever else under defensive support.

I think that Keith Law held himself pretty well… and that other guy is a huge douche.

Okay, I just finished listening to it.  Those guys are such huge pieces of shit.

My favorite part was when the hosts asked Keith if Wain/Carp should have ignored Duncan’s advice of pitching to contact in order to rack up more strikeouts and he simply replied, “That’s what all pitching coaches tell their pitchers.”

Second favorite moment was when Keith explained that “carrying a team on your back” is bullshit old-school mumbo-jumbo.

If Will wants to argue that Wainright is “better”, whatever.  It’s irrelevant for the Cy Young.  It’s who produces the most, within the context of his environment.

I don’t mind this, actually.  If I were to vote personally, I’d probably just give the MVP and Cy Young vote to whoever led the league in WPA.

But I think there’s a case to be made that it should go to the BEST player.  For example… Cliff Lee pitched 200+ innings in 2008 that were better than Halladay’s 200+ innings in 2008.  But, in my mind, Halladay was the better pitcher (I mean, his “true talent” was higher, he just had some bad luck, or Lee had some good luck, or random variation, or whatever).

50 years from now, when someone looks at baseball-reference and looks at Cy Young winners, it would make a lot more sense if Pedro won in 2002, then Halladay got his, then Johan won the next bunch, instead of Colon and CC.  It would be an accurate representation of who was the best pitcher each year, instead of what it is now - who was the best, mixed with who was the luckiest.

Anyways… just saying… there’s an argument there.  If Wainwright goes and wins it in 2010 and 2011 in a landslide, Carroll’s argument I think becomes clearer.

As Tom pointed out at the beginning, the Holy Writers are p*ssed that their favorite got jobbed out of the award by the two saber newbies, not caring to see that Carroll is about the least saber person at BP (along with Kahrl, which is probably why they were admitted in the first place, not being number nerds). It was clear from Will’s blog post that he probably reasoned his picks the same way as most of the veteran writers.

I posted a response to Will’s blog at BP showing that my calculation of park adjusted runs saved for 2009 had both Haren and Vasquez behind Lincecum, even with Carpenter, and ahead of Wainright.

I have always thought that Haren and Vasquez were high quality pitchers, more so that I thought of Wainright. Therefor, I had no problem seeing them in someone’s top three, definitely in the top five in the NL.

That interviewer was a total jackass, but Law is exactly the kind of guy that can handle it. 

One thing about Carpinter, he had 4.6% HR/FB compared to his career average of 10.6%. If we’re going to adjusted HR/FB%, given that it is subject to a lot of noise, by using xFIP, Carpinter really falls behind most of the pack.  His xFIP was 3.46, Vazquez 2.89, Lincecum 2.94, Wainwright 3.45, Haren 3.16.  Given the innings pitched, Carpinter really isn’t in the discussion anymore and Haren probably beats Wainwright as well, with Lincecum first and Vazquez second (though that is REALLY close and I’m inclinded to think Lincecum can maintain a lower HR/FB as he’s been around 5% for two years).

I just listened to that ESPN radio interview.  It was embarrassingly awkward at times.

Keith did a pretty good job and speaks fairly well.  As someone who has done a half dozen radio interviews or so, it is a lot more fun and pleasant if you dumb down your approach for the host and the audience and you don’t take it too seriously.  Keith trying to argue some of those things with those hosts is like the U.S. military fighting against the Iraqi Republican Guard.  He would have been better off toning down his attitude a little.  He also could have been a bit more pleasant when signing off, like, “Thanks for having me, guys” or something like that.

For what ever its worth, Law was cut off a lot.  Including his response at the very end.  If I were in that spot, I don’t think I would have handled it as well as Law did.  I’d have been hanging up or walking out after about the 3 minute.  That guy obviously had no intention of hearing out Law’s reasoning for his picks, but just wanted to walk all over him, or at least try.  Law did a good job in not letting the jerk control the conversation without coming off as a complete jerk himself, at least that’s how I took it.

And what was interviewer’s argument anyway?  That Carp pitched to contact and people in STL care a lot?  It sound more like he was bashing Law than trying to present his own case.

For what ever its worth, Law was cut off a lot.  Including his response at the very end.  If I were in that spot, I don’t think I would have handled it as well as Law did.  I’d have been hanging up or walking out after about the 3 minute.  That guy obviously had no intention of hearing out Law’s reasoning for his picks, but just wanted to walk all over him, or at least try.  Law did a good job in not letting the jerk control the conversation without coming off as a complete jerk himself, at least that’s how I took it.

And what was the interviewer’s argument anyway?  That Carp pitched to contact and people in STL care a lot?  It sound more like he was bashing Law than trying to present his own case.

Wow. Telling Keith that he’s “wasting his time” by going around the country watching games because he uses statistical analysis to inform his decision is absurd. This is why I don’t listen to sports radio.

Sports radio is worthless, enlightenment (as opposed to entertainment)-wise of course, but in defense of the host:

He makes a valid point when he says (something like), “If a pitcher pitches to contact because he is instructed to do that on a team with good defense, should that be held against him?”

Imagine a pitcher who strikes out a lot of batters and typically has a good FIP.  Now imagine he plays for a team with Rolen, Everett, Polanco, Pujols, Gutierrez, Ichiro and Crawford.  And he changes his approach such that he allows many fewer K’s and more BIP. That might be an optimal approach, but his FIP will suffer. 

Obviously this is not the case with Carpenter and the Cardinals, but the host’s point is a reasonable one in general, given his limited understanding (none actually) of the issues being discussed.

And Keith says something like, “Why should anyone care who wins the award or what my ballot looks like?”

The host responds, and correctly so, that the STL fans (and the fans from all the other cities) care.  The awards are to stimulate fan interest of course.  And many fans care who wins and some care whether their team’s players are listed on the ballots.  So I don’t know what Keith is talking about.

And, has already pointed out, where is Keith getting the idea that the Giants have poor (or average) defense, but that the Cardinals have good defense?

Finally, Keith trying to discuss or explain DIPS - well, this radio forum was neither the time nor the place.  You have to carefully pick your “fights.” And Keith’s remarks about the host’s “analysis background or skills” was out of line for a radio show.  If Keith wants to retain his “card” or whatever it is that gives him a vote, he is going to have to learn that.  I think.

If they ask him to come on the show to explain his vote, and he used defense-independent metrics to arrive at his vote, how is he supposed to explain himself without going at least to some extent into those?  It seems like the choices were:

-try to explain or at least discuss the reasoning he used to make his decision (DIPS)
-refuse to explain his decision and just say he had reasons but can’t or won’t explain them
-lie or make something up, which would probably be obvious BS
-refuse to appear on the show in the first place

Maybe that is oversimplifying it, but if he agrees to go on the show because they want him to discuss his reasoning for his ballot, I don’t see how he can avoid discussing DIPS to some extent.  He stayed pretty conceptual and didn’t try to overwhelm anyone with statistical concepts they couldn’t possibly understand were they to try.

He was out of line attacking the hosts’ lack of analytical background, but the hosts had been out of line in their treatment of him as a guest on their show the entire time.  At some point, it became clear that no decent discussion was going to take place and Law was wasting his time, and that these guys were just dismissing him in part out of ignorance and arrogance and refusal to consider that maybe a deeper analysis could reveal something that didn’t jump out to them as obvious from the start, and I think Law made a mistake out of the building frustration from all that.  Given how he was treated on the show, I’m willing to cut him a little slack on that comment.

I interpreted his comment about why the fans care as more, why do they care so much that they are moved to flood his email with abusive emails and castigate him every chance they get.  I know that’s not what he said, but knowing that that happens to him, I got the impression that that was coming through when he said that.

I just don’t think there’s much chance of being graceful in the context of an environment such as that interview, especially for someone who has never been particularly tactful to begin with.  He tried to legitimately have the discussion they asked him to come on the show to have, and he made some dumb and/or rude comments in response to being treated awfully.  He may not have handled it perfectly, but I can’t really blame him for that.

"He tried to legitimately have the discussion they asked him to come on the show to have, and he made some dumb and/or rude comments in response to being treated awfully.  He may not have handled it perfectly, but I can’t really blame him for that.”

/soapbox

Do you have any children? Is that what you teach them? They are “not to blame” when they do something wrong as long as someone else has (presumably - in their eyes) done them wrong too?

I hope not.  I teach my kids to take responsibility for their actions (and words), regardless of what someone does or says to them. Wrong is wrong, and other people’s wrongs are not excuse for bad behavior.  There is a difference between understanding someone’s (or your owns) bad behavior and condoning it.  There is also a difference between holding someone accountable for their bad behavior and exhibiting bad behavior in return.

In fact, if someone is mean to my children, I tell them that that person needs extra kindness and that they are mean because no one has ever been nice to them.  I think that is the correct approach.

Your approach, and I don’t think you really mean it, but that is what you said, fuels the never-ending cycle of intolerance, persecution, and ultimately violence.

/soapbox

34

I agree that the co-host(?) had a few valid points, but like you said, they were irrelevant to the discussion.

Regarding pitching to contact, I really don’t think you can hold that against a pitcher. I don’t think you can quantify “pitching to contact”, but it’s certainly something to take into account during evaluation.

And Law should at least acknowledge that his votes matter. Fans care about these awards, regardless of how bizarrely irrelevant they may be to real production/value/talent level. It’s a status symbol that fans can enjoy vicariously.

/sarcasm

And why do you hate children so much?

/sarcasm

I do not have children, so perhaps I can’t fully understand your perspective, but I don’t imagine that if I did, I would form judgments about Keith Law’s appearance on a radio show from the perspective of his parent trying to teach him to play nicely with other children.  Maybe I am wrong about that, though.

When someone is a jerk to me, at least in my better times, I will try to cut them some slack and understand why they might be acting that way.  That’s all I’m trying to do with Law, which isn’t that hard, because it’s very easy to understand why he would react that way.  If it were my responsibility to teach Keith Law how to interact with society, I would probably hold him more accountable for his reactions.  As someone who has no responsibility to mold Keith Law into a better-adjusted adult, I find it more productive to try to understand his comments from an empathetic perspective. 

I don’t think that empathy toward people who make mistakes, particularly mistakes like making a defensive remark on the radio, fuels a never-ending cycle of intolerance, persecution, and ultimately violence.  I do think it is important to realize that people are not perfect, and that you can drive a reasonable person to react defensively and make mistakes if you set out to attack them, and that it’s more important to identify the harm in putting others in those situations so we can avoid doing so than to chastise those whose weaknesses are exposed in such moments under fire.

"I don’t think that empathy toward people who make mistakes, particularly mistakes like making a defensive remark on the radio, fuels a never-ending cycle of intolerance, persecution, and ultimately violence.”

You are misinterpreting what I said.  I clearly said that empathy for anyone whose behavior is bad is perfectly acceptable.

That was the exactly the point I made about people who might treat my children badly (that perhaps the reason that they do is because they are not receiving enough love, attention, etc., from their parents or whomever, and therefore they deserve sympathy and understanding).

However, you (also) clearly said that Law is “not to blame” for behaving badly because someone else was behaving badly toward him.  While he too deserves empathy and understanding for his bad behavior, he is not “unaccountable,” which is synonymous with “not to blame.”

And he is an adult and not a child.  An adult is expected to act appropriately regardless of how others act toward him/her.  While we can understand why someone might attempt to “make two wrongs into a right,” we should not condone it.

Isn’t that what starts and fuels war - you (a country) do something bad to me, so I do something worse to you, and then you do something worse to me, so on and so forth?

One of the most important lessons for children and adults (among many of course) is NOT to treat anger with anger or hatred with hatred or violence with violence.

That was my point and it had little to do with Keith Law, ESPN, or baseball…

I don’t know if “pitching to contact” will hurt your FIP.  Remember the equation:

FIP = 3.2 + (13*HR + 3*BBB - 2*SO)/IP

A “perfect” pitch to contact pitcher (0 HR, BB, SO) will end up with a 3.2 ERA.  Other than the really great pitchers (which is what we are talking about), your FIP will improve if you are a “perfect” pitch to contact pitcher.

For pitchers like Carpenter, Lincecum, etc, they can do better than 3.2.

However, what if they have great fielders?  Let’s see.  If they normally give up 70% BIP, and they “pitch to contact” so that they instead give up 80% BIP, what happens?

Let’s work it out.  If they have fielders who are -1.00 runs per game (minus is better) when they give up 70% BIP, then if they give up 80% BIP, they can “leverage” their fielders by being -1.14 runs per game out of them.

If they can “pitch to contact” by dropping thier BB, SO to do that, they can leverage their fielders by an extra .14 runs per game.  And that’s IF they have the best fielders in baseball.

In the end, in terms of leveraging your fielders, you can get, maybe, an extra .10 runs per game out of the deal.  Which, over 25 starts of 9 IP (225 IP) means 2.5 runs for the season.

That’s HARDLY the impact we care to measure, is it?

Joel Piniero is a prime example of the first part of Tango’s #40.  Hardly any K’s, BB’s or HRs and a FIP of ~3.2 (3.27 actually) good for 14th in MLB.

I may have misinterpreted you when I applied your interpretation of what I said to what I intended to say.  If so, I apologize.  You clearly did say that empathy toward people who were jerks was ok, but you also seem to be attacking my perspective (if you don’t want to call it attacking, that’s fine, but however one would interpret saying it causes intolerance and violence and wars) of judging Law empathetically rather than chastising him for his mistakes.

I did not, however, write words or phrases you never said and put them in quotes and say that you clearly said them, or claim that because you were defending someone who made a few defensive remarks on the radio, that “your approach, and I don’t think you really mean it, but that is what you said, fuels the never-ending cycle of intolerance, persecution, and ultimately violence.” So I think I am being misinterpreted a bit too.

*****

Has anyone done a study of pitchers who pitch to contact and have a lot of success and compare their FIPs in front of good defenses and in front of bad defenses?  Or looked at pairings of such pitchers and particular excellent defenders, and seen if those pitchers are somehow able to induce a greater percentage of balls in play toward that defender?  Or perhaps even just looked at how FIP and contact PAs change for a given pitching staff when the defense behind them improves significantly?  It seems like, from Tom’s numbers, it’s not worth the trouble, but I was wondering if there was some empirical work out there that would say anything on the subject.

Kincaid, no problem!  I was just using your post as an excuse to do a little pontificating!

Clearly the better your defense, the more you want to pitch to contact.  However, as Tango points out, since BB decrease as you do that, the marginal benefit in FIP is always going to be small.

But, I mentioned it only to point out the host’s response was defensible even though he really didn’t know what he was talking about.

MGL,

“An adult is expected to act appropriately regardless of how others act toward him/her.  While we can understand why someone might attempt to “make two wrongs into a right,” we should not condone it.

Isn’t that what starts and fuels war - you (a country) do something bad to me, so I do something worse to you, and then you do something worse to me, so on and so forth?

One of the most important lessons for children and adults (among many of course) is NOT to treat anger with anger or hatred with hatred or violence with violence.”

I just can’t agree with you here.  Not everything can be resolved by empathy or some idea of “playing nice.” I’m not going to say that two wrongs do make a right, but in certain situations a second action, that may be considered wrong if taken out of context, may be the perfectly reasonable action.

You bring up the point of how wars start.  Well on Dec. 8th 1941, did the USA not have every reason to blow as many Japanese ships they could find out off the water?  Should we have rolled over and asked them “Gee Japan, what’s bothering you, why’d you do that?  Surely we can work this out?”

Or even at a personal level, someone can simply make threatening motions or even just threats toward you, and you have every right to defend yourself.  I understand your point, and KLaw is a long way from any of these situations, but you’ve taken it too far.

Law reacted in a less than ideal way, but he was doing nothing more than defending himself from an ignorant jack-ass that had no intention of having an honest discussion (which makes treating the ignorant jack-ass perfectly useless anyway, regardless of what Law said, that guy wasn’t there to have an honest discussion).  That context matters when it comes time to judge Law’s reactions.

And please, this “what would you teach you kids” thing is complete BS. Its nothing more than a form of begging the question (ie. “you shouldn’t do X, because reasonable people don’t teach their kid to do X").  I’ll teach my kids to act as responsible and reasonable as possible.  That will include that once a line has been crossed you need to stand up for yourself and defend yourself, both verbally and physically if necessary.  Now, you can teach your kids however you want.

--
Clearly the better your defense, the more you want to pitch to contact. 
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MGL, just to be clear, you meant, “the better your defense, the less pitching to contact will hurt a pitcher”. In the end, the SO is still the best result for the pitcher regardless of defense, right?

There probably is a different ideal strategy with different defenses, just that it seems to be relatively minor.  From an FIP perspective, you want to minimize the sum values of HR, BB, and SO relative to the value of a ball in play.  The typical coefficients for FIP, assuming an average value of a BIP, are 13, 3, and 2, but if the value of a BIP changes, the coefficients change as well.  Raising the value of a BIP (to the defense) will push the difference in value between a BIP and a HR and between a BIP and BB higher while bringing the values of a BIP and a K closer together.  That means the coefficients for HR and BB will be further from zero and for K closer to zero, meaning HR and BB become more costly and K less advantageous.

If SO were independent of the other types of events, then yes, you’d still want to strike out as many as you could.  If you can reduce the number of BB and HR by throwing more sinkers in the zone or whatever, and it also reduces your strikeouts, you still might find a different optimization by lowering strikeouts because the same strategy that lowers Ks also lowers BBs and HRs.

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I do actually agree with MGL on the greater picture.  In the Pearl Harbor case, you can take it even further back to Japan’s reaction to the U.S. building up its military bases in the Pacific-did they have reason to react aggressively?  Probably, but both we and they would have probably been better off had they not attacked.  After they did, we probably had reason enough to start blowing as many Japanese ships out of the water as we could, but in doing so, a lot more people on both sides were killed and eventually two entire cities were utterly destroyed as the violence escalated.  I don’t see that one attack as sole justification for the entirety of the consequences of our involvement in the war.  Is a country better off chasing every attack or perceived threat into an all out war from the start, or are there times when it would be beneficial to avoid war even after being attacked or threatened if it is possible that not retaliating does not increase the risk of escalating violence against you?  I think there are probably times when the latter is true, to the point that it should not be the automatic response to return violence or threats of violence with escalation.

"you can take it even further back to Japan’s reaction to the U.S. building up its military bases in the Pacific-did they have reason to react aggressively?  Probably, but both we and they would have probably been better off had they not attacked.”

The build up was directly related to Japanese aggression all over Southeast-Asia and in the Southern Pacific.  The US was merely preparing to defend itself and actually defending its allies (Australia for example) from certain attack by an aggressive expansionist nation.  Remember, this is the same nation that committed the Rape of Naking.  Against such actions, the only reasonable response is violence.  And if that ends in death for some, it is still better than the alternative.  Which as the Japanese showed in Nanking, may not have saved any lives anyway.  Had we not built up forces, supported our allies and fought back as we did, maybe we’d be talking about the Rape of Sydney as well?  Maybe even San Francisco?

“Is a country better off chasing every attack or perceived threat into an all out war from the start, or are there times when it would be beneficial to avoid war even after being attacked or threatened if it is possible that not retaliating does not increase the risk of escalating violence against you?”

Nice strawman.  No one is claiming every action should lead to an escalation of violence.  But instead that there are times when that is exactly the reasonable thing to do.  Would the Jews in Germany not have been better off putting up more resistance as their freedoms were slowly taken away, for example?  Had they organized, taken up arms, and attempted to flee the country more quickly, instead of following this “turn the other cheek” kind of mentality so far, maybe some 10 million of them wouldn’t have died?

“to the point that it should not be the automatic response to return violence or threats of violence with escalation.”

Again, I never said it should be automatic.  But part of being a rational and reasonable person is knowing when resorting to violence is necessary.  In a perfect world violence would never be needed, but this is no perfect world.

Right, you can take it back further to our building up forces in response to Japanese threats.  Each threat or reaction was met with an escalated reaction, and that escalation ended up being worse for both sides.  Had somebody reacted differently, there are times when that can be stopped.  I’m not digging back to place blame on one side or the other, but to look at where that attack was just another point in the chain of elevating responses to threats and violence, and that each successive response that was to tone it up for the next round eventually exploded into something that was worse than not fighting.

When you said, “Well on Dec. 8th 1941, did the USA not have every reason to blow as many Japanese ships they could find out off the water?  Should we have rolled over and asked them ‘Gee Japan, what’s bothering you, why’d you do that?  Surely we can work this out?’” yes, we probably should have attempted to communicate with Japan before escalating violence and not simply gone off blowing every Japanese ship we could out of the water.  That paints a scenario of automatically responding with escalated violence without attempting to understand the attack or avoid escalation first, at least in that specific situation.  Perhaps you don’t mean it shouldn’t be automatic in every situation, and I never meant to imply that you did, but I don’t think it should with any situation.  I don’t think automatic violence without any attempt at understanding or of the consideration of the potential effects of escalation vs. non-violent response is ever a reasonable response.  Without at least attempting to make those considerations, how do you rationally decide that automatically responding to any specific situation is necessary?

Nonviolence is not always a “turn-the-other cheek” mentality, particularly non-violent opposition.  Organizing and fleeing the country are non-violent actions.  Had the Jews formed their own militia and attacked the Nazis early in the reign of the Third Reich as their primary response to building tensions, would fewer than 6 million Jews have died?  Or would it fuel the Nazi’s propaganda on the dangers of the Jewish people and build popular support against the Jews following their aggressive action?  Would it deter other nations from offering sanctuary to them as an attacking army and diminish international sympathy for their cause?  How many Jews who survived or escaped capture or took refuge in neighboring countries or with sympathetic Germans would have been killed either in battle or because of harsher and earlier crackdowns and more public antipathy toward them?

"Right, you can take it back further to our building up forces in response to Japanese threats.  Each threat or reaction was met with an escalated reaction, and that escalation ended up being worse for both sides.  Had somebody reacted differently, there are times when that can be stopped.”

Here’s the thing, for this philosophy to work, you have to assume that the other side will eventually stop aggression in response to meeting no aggression against them.  Was there any indication that the Japanese or Germans of WWII would stop aggression when faced with no resistance?  I would argue no, there is not.  Both the Japanese and Germans were openly hostile towards their neighbors and showed every intention of continuing until they had conquered the desired nations.  Both sides even proved to be capable of mass genocide against non-combatants.  With the Japanese, we knew this about them long before Pearl Harbor.  With the Germans we only saw the extreme rhetoric.

“I don’t think automatic violence without any attempt at understanding or of the consideration of the potential effects of escalation vs. non-violent response is ever a reasonable response.”

Well that depends on your definition of “any.” In some situations the action is so blatant that it doesn’t require much thought.  If we are to keep with the Pearl Harbor example, what exactly would you advocate doing?  And remember our nations where in the middle or negotiations when the attack happened. 

In this case, I think the reasonings where obvious.  Japan saw that their interests were best served by going to war with America.  They could not continue their expansion without, at the very least, America’s non-involvement (meaning no rubber/oil trade embargoes, or helping to defend the Aussies and parts of southeast asia).  America was not going to give on that given that Japan was using those resources to invade and literally rape other countries.  This made America’s choice easy.  They had to fight.  If they didn’t Japan would just end up killing those in less well equipped militaries and civilians of other nations.  By fighting, we forced them to pay for their aggression with their own blood instead that of others. 

While it was unfortunate what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this was another case where the Japanese forced our hand.  They would not negotiate, stalling for months, and where hell-bent on killing as many Americans as they could as we attempted peace talks, even when defeat was at the door step. 

Any stand off strategy, with our Navy containing what was left of the Japanese armed forces would have just cost us more American lives, regardless of out come.  Any land invasion would have killed millions, and even just waiting was killing over 1000 Americans a week (I don’t know the number of Japanese deaths).

“Or would it fuel the Nazi’s propaganda on the dangers of the Jewish people and build popular support against the Jews following their aggressive action?”

It probably would have, but in the face of being hauled away never to be seen again? 

“How many Jews who survived or escaped capture or took refuge in neighboring countries or with sympathetic Germans would have been killed either in battle or because of harsher and earlier crackdowns and more public antipathy toward them?”

I’m sorry, but public antipathy just wasn’t enough.  And not just the public, but the serving solders in Hitler’s armies.  Relying on public antipathy may of saved some lives, but its hard figure how many it cost.  They certainly didn’t have to form a militia to fight the Germans openly.  That they surely would have lost, but they time and time again surrendered freedoms with hardly a fight.  In the end it may not have changed much, given the size and power of Nazi Germany, but given what happened, I would say that their non-violent approach failed.  In the face of that kind of evil, the only option is to fight.

My position is B.S.?  I don’t have a position, at least I can’t possibly state one in a few dozen or hundred words on a baseball blog.

Is it OK to sometimes “stand up for yourself?” Of course, but that depends on what you mean and for what purpose. One man’s “standing up” is punching another guy in a bar for insulting his girlfriend, while to someone else, that behavior is nothing more than assault and battery.

In general, it is human nature to respond to might with might (with words or physically), and that is generally wrong (counterproductive in the grand scheme of things).

Is it always wrong?  Of course not.  Are there situations that fall into a gray and/or complex area, in which case it is difficult to know what is right or wrong and reasonable people can disagree?  Of course.

I have no idea whether the U.S. “response” to Pearl Harbor was correct or not. I suspect that that is an enormously complex question and I assume that there were hundreds of “responses” by the U.S. and many “reasons” why Japan did what they did, many of them not known or well understood, certainly by us.

Suggesting that I, based on what I wrote on this thread, or even in other threads, would suggest that we should have said, “Gee Japan, what’s bothering you, why’d you do that?” is enormously childish, ignorant, and needlessly combative.

Other than the above comments, I don’t wish to discuss that topic anymore.

JD, no I did not mean that.  Of course a SO is better than a BIP.  But assuming that a pitcher actually can optimize his overall value by changing where in the K zone he throws his pitches, which I think is a reasonable assumption, then yes, the better the defense, the more he wants to specifically throw more towards the center, thus pitching “more to contact.” K’s will go down a little and BIP will go up much less so, presumably.  You are obviously trying to substitute 5 BIP for 1 K or whatever the correct ratio is.

Imagine a pitcher with no fielders. How should he pitch?  Obviously he needs to pitch in such a way that he walks or K’s everyone. The only way to do that is to try and throw everything out of the zone and hope that some batters strike themselves out occasionally.

Now, imagine a pitcher with such good defenders that every BIP is an out. How does a pitcher want to pitch?  He wants to let every ball be hit and risk the occasional HR in order not to walk anyone.  Pitching the same way he always pitches is not going to work.  He will throw the ball low and down the middle or middle away all the time.  He might still attempt to K someone when behind in the count, but the only thing he is saving when going for the K is the occasional HR. It is usually not worth doing that and risking a walk.

Those are the two extremes in defensive talent.  Anything in between requires a “moving” (depending on how good or bad the defense is) balance of the two extreme pitching styles.

MGL, I didn’t call your position or argument as a whole BS.  That was reserved for that arrogant little diatribe about the kids: “Do you have any children? Is that what you teach them? They are “not to blame” when they do something wrong as long as someone else has (presumably - in their eyes) done them wrong too?  I hope not.” (which is surely a position, and yes you can state one in a few hundred words)

Then you go on to say a statement of mine was, “enormously childish, ignorant, and needlessly combative. “ Well I can say the same exact thing about your comment above.  Being “wrong” depends on context.  If my kid gets punched on the play ground, its perfectly reasonable for him to defend himself physically, even though in a vacuum, those actions would appear to be wrong as well.

Second, this was not your original stance:

“Are there situations that fall into a gray and/or complex area, in which case it is difficult to know what is right or wrong and reasonable people can disagree?  Of course.”

Let me remind you to what I was responding: “One of the most important lessons for children and adults (among many of course) is NOT to treat anger with anger or hatred with hatred or violence with violence.”

I’m sorry if I did not somehow see through your statements to pick up on some intending meaning, I suggest you do a better job of saying what you mean, and meaning what you say next time.  I would never say to respond to hatred or anger in kind, as those are emotions that just lead to irrational actions.  However, the rational action may be to respond to violence with violence.

Finally, if you don’t want people to be combative with you, don’t insinuate that you know how to raise their kids better than they do.  Going back to being reasonable and rational, such arguments are almost always some combination of an appeal to ridicule, begging the question, and/or a strawman.  And in the end this served as a great red herring.  Instead of debating whether or not Law acted appropriately (which we’re all roughly in agreement, that he could have done better) and the arguments presented on the radio interview, we’re talking about what we teach our kids and Pearl Harbor.  Now maybe I’ve responded with some haste and some abusive remarks (the quote above about what would your responce to Pearl have been was not meant to be abusive, but I can understand how it came off that way), though I think it is pretty obvious you have as well.

Now, if we both can not treat eachother more reasonably, maybe you’re right this discussion should stop.  I’ve made my point (however harshly at this point), whether you accept it or not is up to you.

To return to the main topic at hand.  Depending on the range in which pitchers actually opperate in MLB, it may never be approprate to adjust to give up more BIP however.  Obviously there is some optimal curve depending on how good your fielders are, but MLB pitchers may not be anywere near that optimal curve.  So, even with the best defenses in MLB, the best pitchers may already being giving up too many BIP.  Now I’m not the expert on this here, but I would guess this is the case.

Wally, I agree with everything you said, or at least most of it.  I wasn’t trying to attack Kinkaid (and he doesn’t have kids anyway - not that I knew that).  I was just using him as a springboard to get on a soapbox and make a philosophical point.

As far as optimal pitcher approach, of course if pitchers are not pitching optimally now, then it might not behoove them to change their approach if the quality of their defense changes, but…

Assuming that pitchers are trying to pitch optimally all the time, I think it is a given that as their defense changes, their approach should (must) change.  However, for all practical purposes it probably makes little or no difference.  The amount of change necessary when a pitcher goes, for example, from a real life bad defense to a real life good one, is very small.  He should probably just pitch the same and be thankful that he has a good defense.