THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

It’s worth noting that the M’s are using Ryan Rowland-Smith (their default long reliever) as a starter right now, thanks to issues to Felix, Bedard, and Batista.  With Bedard and Batista both still on the roster but not really able to pitch much (Miggy threw one inning today, his first in a while), the M’s basically have a ten man pitching staff, and one of their starters is a reliever who can’t go more than about 60-70 pitches right now. 

The M’s just got 15 innings out of their bullpen, their pitching rotation for the next few days in Washburn-TBD-TBD-TBD, and a win in the standings doesn’t do them any good at all. 

They tried to win, and they ran out of pitchers.  It happens.

I don’t find it egregious that he doesn’t use Rhodes or Morrow.  If Rhodes can’t pitch, he can’t pitch.  And pitching Morrow, one of your better young pitchers, for a fifth time in six games when you’re 18 games under .500, seems like a poor move if you can avoid it at all.

That said, why was Washburn, the next day’s starter, not even mentioned?  Isn’t that the obvious play in this situation?

That sounds like the right call - go to Washburn and then call up a guy from AAA to make the next start.

This is perhaps off-topic, but is there PitchFX data or something that someone who knows what he’s doing can use to explain to us how well Burke pitched?  I’m really curious as to just how badly, in objective terms, a backup catcher (who was formerly a pitcher) throws, in comparison to, say, replacement player.

The Tacoma rotation isn’t much better.  Rohrbaugh and Feierabend are hurt, and the M’s did a horrible job of stocking up on free talent arms the last few years, so they’re doing bullpen games just to get through PCL line-ups and trying to keep afloat. 

And yes, as Phil notes, Burke used to pitch, and he’s actually got a not horrible knuckleball (he threw one to Thames) as well.  He was between 80-87 with his “fastball”, and tossed some low-70’s curves for good measure.  He’s not a major league quality pitcher, but he’s not the usual position player.

I could be wrong about this.  It just seemed like an odd thing to do in a 1-1 game.  Again, since it is the AL, can’t you just bring in a middle or long reliever to pitch 80 or 90 pitches.  In a 15 inning game, you shouldn’t need more than a starter and 2 relievers.

And maybe Burke is not as bad as I had assumed.

Due to the injury problems they’re having, the team’s long reliever started the game.  Rowland-Smith went 5 (throwing 87 pitches, by far his season high), so they had to get 15 innings from a collection of relievers that didn’t include Morrow (pitched 4 times in last 5 days) and Rhodes (slept wrong, was deemed unavailable after warming up poorly). 

Mark Lowe threw 38 pitches in his one inning of work and is still trying to get his form back after major arm surgery.  I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have been in favor of him staying out there longer. 

Roy Corcoran threw 21 pitches in 2 innings.  You might have been able to squeeze one more out of him, but he’s not particularly good, and if he would have given up the lead in the 9th in his third inning of work, we would justifiably be angry at Riggleman for letting their worst reliever pitch in such a high leverage situation. 

Miguel Batista threw 19 innings in one inning of work.  He’d thrown two innings the day before after missing 10 days due to various injuries.  Again, you probably could have gotten another inning out of him, but he’s not good either, and the same deal for Corcoran applies here. 

Sean Green threw 20 pitches in one inning, which is close to his max, and he’s been worked like a dog this year.  He leads the AL in appearances and is on pace to throw 90 innings this year.  He doesn’t need to be throwing a ton of pitches to boot. 

Cesar Jimenez threw 57 pitches in four innings.  He was the last available guy in the pen, so they pushed him as far as they could.  He gave them four scoreless innings, but he was just out of gas. 

So, maybe they could have gotten one more inning from Corcoran and Batista if they had the forsight of knowing the game was going to go 15 in the 9th/10th innings, but, I can’t blame Riggleman for how he handled the pen today.  He got almost as much as he could from everyone who was available, and when he ran out of pitchers, he avoided the temptation to put Morrow at risk in a game that really doesn’t mean a thing to the Mariners. 

Yea, they could have used Washburn and then pulled a rabbit out of a hat in order to get a kid up from Double-A to make his ML debut tomorrow, but that would have required a 40 man roster move and the further jumbling of a rotation that is 60% question marks right now. 

Burke was the best option.  It might be weird to say it, but the M’s aren’t in a normal situation right now.

They should’ve put Ichiro in to pitch if only for the sake of giving a thrill for the fans who were still there in the fifteenth inning cheering on a team that sucks.

MGL made a comment elsewhere that he gives managers a pass on the batting order. I feel the same way about this subject. Let the manager do what he believes is necessary to manage pitcher workloads and regularity of usage.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t have ‘infinite’ extra innings. That rule is from the far distant past, when player workload was not an issue. I say, play 2 (or whatever) extra innings, and then call it a tie.

This is slightly related to a question I’ve been wondering about.

Has anyone investigated pitching stats by “non-pitchers” to see if the BABIP still holds steady in the .300 neighborhood at that extreme lack of talent?

That is an excellent and interesting question, Justin. Here is a list of non-pitchers pitching from baseball-reference: http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/fieldPitch.shtml , but you’d have to refine that list because it includes dead-ball era players, and the list, by its definition of non-pitchers as players with “five times as many non-pitching games as games in which they pitched” include players such as Babe Ruth. Basically you want the people who’ve pitched five games or less.

I guess the next question is, if the .300 BABIP doesn’t hold, then where is this level of talent where it slips? is it velocity? can we just pin it to whatever Barry Zito’s “stuff” is defined as?

Has anyone investigated pitching stats by “non-pitchers” to see if the BABIP still holds steady in the .300 neighborhood at that extreme lack of talent?

***

Yep, see http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/hitting-pitchers/.

The pertinent line:

“In total, these guys combined for 223.1 innings pitched, which isn’t much, but provides at least a decent sample size. I remember reading in Voros McCracken’s DIPS 2.0 article that non-pitchers pitching posted a league average batting average on balls in play, which piqued my interest and made me believe that perhaps non-pitchers can relatively successful on the mound. Well, Voros was right. These guys combined for a .280 BABIP, which is just about average, maybe a little below.”

Whither R.A. Dickey?

Dickey threw 105 pitches the night before.  By my count, 36 fastballs, 19 changeups, and 50 knuckleballs.  He averages 86 mph with his fastball and 74 mph on his knuckleball, which makes him seem to me like a higher-effort pitcher than Wakefield, who hits about 74 mph with fastball and 66 with his knuckler.

Despite Dickey’s willingness to volunteer to go again, would he have had much more than Burke?  I suppose he could have thrown only knuckleballs, but I wonder how well he could do with that.

I tried to duplicate David’s numbers in #12.  To get the hitters I just look at cases where plate appearances hitting > batters faced.  I think if that condition holds, you can be sure you don’t have a regular pitcher.  Since WWII, the babip is .294, which surprised me because I thought I had seen these numbers before and it was something like .340.  Guess I was mistaken.

Since 1993 (modern offense era) it’s .291.  These hitters, per 9 innings, allow 1.6 homers, 7.9 walks, and 3.8 strikeouts.

Sample size is 333 innings post WWII and 62 innings post 1993.

I got similar numbers, running thru the baseball-reference list, looking for retro era players.

114 players, 166 G, 187.1 IP 11.10 H 7.69 ER 1.49 HR 7.01 BB 3.60 SO
with pitches 108 G, 113.0 IP 11.34 H 7.59 ER 1.12 HR 7.11 BB 3.36 SO
(Tom Gorzellany?)

Larger group .292 babip, smaller .305

So these guys issue many more walks, many fewer strikeouts, and some more HRs, but basically same babip

Strk% is .55, vs lg .62, inplay/strk .45 vs lg ABT .35

I backtrack again. I now think he SHOULD be fired on the spot, but not for pitching Burke.

For this comment:

Mariners manager Jim Riggleman says he isn’t trying to use Vidro in a typical cleanup role, but to offer “protection” to No. 3 hitter Raul Ibanez against right-handed pitchers. The idea is that Vidro, historically a good contact hitter from both sides of the plate, would make teams think twice about walking Ibanez or pitching around him.

“I know his numbers aren’t as good this year,” Riggleman said. “But he’s still got that reputation that’ll make guys think about not giving Ibanez anything to hit.”

When it comes to players, either we accept everything a manager (or GM) says as being sincere, or we have to ignore everything he says as being salesmanship ("you look great in that shirt!").  There’s no in-between.

What I’d like to know from the manager/GM is if he is being sincere or if he is being a b-llsh-tter, so I can treat him accordingly.

I’m going to have to presume b.s., and therefore I need to try to ignore absolutely anything they say regarding a player.