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Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Tandem pitchers
Greg Rubin sent me a paper (see link below). There are a couple of huge problems that shows why the run savings can’t be 96 runs. There are a couple of other parts to the paper that really should be removed but we’ll get to that tomorrow. But, I do like the amount of effort it takes to do this, so hopefully he’ll take good things out of what I’m about to write.
On page 3, he talks about runs allowed of 19.9 runs the first time through the order, 24.8 the second time, 25.5 the third time and 13.3 the 4th time. Unfortunately, I can’t tell what the denominator is. It looks like it’s around 205 batters, but that can’t possibly be the case for each of the 4 times. Runs per batter faced should have been the metric of choice (which is what he uses later on anyway). Anyway, I don’t believe that 2nd time is 25% higher runs allowed than 1st time. I’ve done this research in The Book already, and it’s closer to 10%.
The second problem is that he now has 8 pitchers in his 4 pairs of pitchers. Well, if you have 8 pitchers, that means you have your 5 main starters, plus 3 more pitchers. Those three are NOT going to have .105 runs per PA, as Greg is suggesting with the other 5.
So, let’s try to work this out: the more reasonable estimate for runs per PA the first time through the order for the main 5 is .11 runs, and the 2nd time through it’s .12 runs. But for the other 3 new pitchers, would probably be .12 runs the 1st time through and .13 runs the 2nd time through. So, we have 5 pitchers average .115 and 3 pitchers averaging .125, for an overall average of .119 runs.
And that’s pretty much what the overall league average is anyway. So, no advantage.
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