THE BOOK cover
The Unwritten Book is Finally Written!
An in-depth analysis of: The sacrifice bunt, batter/pitcher matchups, the intentional base on balls, optimizing a batting lineup, hot and cold streaks, clutch performance, platooning strategies, and much more.
Read Excerpts & Customer Reviews

Buy The Book from Amazon


SABR101 required reading if you enter this site. Check out the Sabermetric Wiki. And interesting baseball books.
MOST RECENT ARTICLES
MAIL : You ask | We say

Advanced


THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Filter posts by...

 

Monday, September 28, 2009

Working the count, for the team

By Tangotiger, 02:14 PM

We’ve talked about this before, and I wish someone would do a study on it.  The question is what ancillary benefits there are a to team for working the count, over and above, the actual direct outcomes.  BtB is talking about it.

The suggestion is that you work the count to get to the middle-inning relievers (as if that’s necessarily a good thing for the batting team). Now, with a study like this, you have to be careful not to start with an endpoint, and work backwards.  You’ll bias your sample like that.

As one example, a reader suggested that the 2008 Cubs did a number on their opponents in the 5th and 6th innings.  So, start there.  Take the team that sees the most pitches per batter, and see how they did against all pitchers in those two innings.  And take the team that sees the fewest pitches per batter.  Do this over a 10-yr time period, and maybe put 3 teams each year in both groups.  You have 30 teams in both pools.  Do you see ANY difference between the two pools in terms of runs per inning, compared to runs scored in the other innings?

(22) Comments • 2009/10/05 • SabermetricsBatter_v_Pitcher
Page 1 of 1 pages

Latest...

COMMENTS

May 26 13:18
What makes for a successful GM?

May 26 12:47
Do pitcher’s reach back for velocity when needed?

May 26 07:27
“Why Kickstarter works”

May 26 03:03
Pete Palmer’s new book: Basic Ball

May 26 01:11
Largest demonstration in Canadian history?

May 25 19:41
What sabermetrics is NOT

May 25 16:59
Howard Stern

May 25 12:51
Chad Curtis

May 25 11:26
Lack of hustle during a game

May 25 10:58
Rooting for laundry

THREADS

September 28, 2009
Working the count, for the team