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Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Out Pitch
Good work by Jeremy looking at Lincecum:
Tim Lincecum retired 89% of batters he got to 0-2 or 1-2 counts. They had no chance. Here’s how Lincecum’s pitch selection breaks down on 0-2 and 1-2 counts, and the results of each pitch type.
FB CH SL CB
Usage 43% 31% 20% 6%
Ball 36% 36% 39% 31%
Out 32% 43% 46% 51%
Hit 7% 4% 4% 1%
RV100 0.3 -4.6 -5.4 -7.8
Lincecum is of course a great pitcher. But at these 2-strike counts, his fastball is average, which, in the grand scheme of things, is impossible. Clearly, batters are simply sitting on his fastball. This is a little lesson to you that even if you have a great pitch, a hitter can simply sit on it and get average results. Lincecum knows this, so 57% of the time on 2-strike counts, he does not throw his fastball. And even when he does throw his fastball, he’s trying to hit the corners (36% called-ball rate).
The natural conclusion:
For example, it’s possible that pitchers are throwing fastballs outside the strike zone to set up breaking balls as their out pitch. So they’re intentionally lowering the value of their fastballs, and therefore are getting better overall results when they throw the fastball even though the fastball doesn’t get the glory in the run value column.
But he says (and I guess I need to look at the charts to get a better understanding of what he means):
However, the conclusions I found when looking at the linear weights value of the entire at bat remain the same as when I analyzed single pitch run values.
Anyway, getting back to it, Lincecum has a 0 run value 43% of the time and -5 run value 57% of the time, for an overall average of -2.9 runs. The question is if he can start throwing his fastball less often (say 20% of the time) at a better run value, say -2 runs, and his other pitches more often, say 80% of the time at a less effective rate, say -3 runs, and still be better off, which in this illustration is -2.8 runs.
As you can see, I’d have to make a drastic change in approach and drastic change in impact in order to get back to the same point. My guess is that pitchers (at least the great ones) have optimized their pitch selections that we should bother trying to think they are suboptimal (like Vlad). So, even if things don’t look balanced, they probably are.
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