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Tuesday, October 18, 2011
What The Book has said about starting pitchers
While I encourage everyone to read The Book, via their local library, Amazon’s free Look Inside, buy-and-return, or outright buying The Book (if you click the link in the top left, we’ll make about 2$ profit), I know there’s still a significant group of people that still won’t do that! Why? I don’t know. In any case, I’m going to clip the “The Book Says” box from Chapter 7, which deals with Starting Pitchers. Note that when we wrote The Book (published Feb 2006), the data available was less. The data from this chapter comes from 1999-2002. Ideally, I’d redo this chapter using 1993-2011 data, plus all the other stuff we’ve learned since then.
Until then, here are the conclusions of each mini-study. If you want to know the reason for these conclusions, then read the relevant part of The Book.
The Book Says:
As the game goes on, the hitter has a progressively greater advantage over the starting pitcher.
The Book Says:
Don’t bank on some magical pitch count level, such as 100 pitches, to tell you when a pitcher’s tank level is low.
The Book Says:
Pitchers perform best with five days of rest, and worst with three days of rest. To manage our entire starting rotation effectively, four days of rest seems to be the optimal point. The current MLB pattern of scheduling the starting rotation works.
The Book Says:
You can’t tell if a pitcher is on based solely on the results of the first nine batters he faces.
The Book Says:
You can indeed tell if a pitcher is off based solely on the results of the first nine batters he faces. Such pitchers will perform somewhat worse than their true talent levels the rest of the way.
The Book Says:
If a pitcher is getting hammered early, there is a huge carryover effect for an inexperienced pitcher. For an experienced pitcher, there may be some evidence of a carryover effect.
The Book Says:
We can’t rely on the poor results of late-game performance to establish the fatigue level of a starter. Observation of a pitcher’s mechanics would be the preferred method.
The Book Says:
If a pitcher is still getting outs late in the game, keep him in there; he may have a bit more left in the tank.
The Book Says:
Starters have a lot going against them, as compared to relievers. They pitch a lot longer, forcing them to pace themselves. They face the same batters multiple times in a game, giving the batters an advantage. Relievers can come in and put all their efforts into a very short stint.
The Book Says:
Selective sampling has a profound effect on interpreting the performance numbers of pitchers as starters and relievers. Be careful with any interpretation.
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