The Hardball Times:When to walk (Part 1)
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The Hardball Times found this 5/16/2008 on www.hardballtimes.com [flag] |
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MLB
Comments (6)
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ElegantMule I’d also wonder how many of these walk were of the “four wide” variety and how many were the result of a pitcher falling behind 3-0 and issuing the IBB instead of continuing the at bat. The latter would seem to me to be less a flawed management decision (assuming it is) and more an ineffective pitching performance forcing a managers hand.
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Wooden_U_Lykteneau While I think this is a step in the right direction, I believe there are some overlooked factors:
1) Tendency of the pitcher/batter to induce/hit ground balls
2) Tendency of the pitcher/batter to induce/hit fly balls
3) Tendency of the pitcher/batter to strike out
4) Tendency of the pitcher/batter to walk
5) Speed of the batter
I won't go the myriad possibilities, but I think it's safe to say that it's easy to envision an identical scenario in the same inning (read: same batters at bat/on deck/on base, same handedness all around) that would occur on two nights back-to-back in which a manager may act differently.
Let's call it's 2nd and 3rd with one out in the Top of 5th inning and a pitch count of less than 65 pitches in an AL park with the batting team ahead 2-0 and the opposing pitcher has a league-average ERA.
For example, on night #1, the manager elects to walk Batter A to get to Batter B because Pitcher A tends to get grounders and doesn't walk many batters. So there's not much risk of walking in a run, and a better-than-average chance of getting a DP.
But on night #2, he decides to let Pitcher B go after Batter A because Pitcher B gives up a lot of fly balls and issues walks at an above average clip, so not only is he less likely to get the DP, he could potentially walk in a run or give up a sac fly, not to mention give up a grand slam. Basically, why bother taking away the pitcher's margin for error (1st base open) while simultaneously increasing the odds of a big inning (how much, well, that's what these guys calculate).
In my head, I've got the Red Sox of 5 years ago and how Grady Little would have handled Derek Lowe (Pitcher A) vs. Tim Wakefield (Pitcher B). If you recall, he was so confident in Lowe's ability to get grounders he'd use an 1B-DH like Brian Daubach in the OF
Now the question is: Is there enough data to extract a meaningful differences in those five factors above?
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ElegantMule My understanding of runs created is that it is empirical; it uses real data to reach an average. You take the thousands of times every MLB team has runners on first and third in and inning, use that to divide run scored in those innings, and Bob’s your uncle. This leaves room for error in league to league and era to era analysis, but the sample size is so large that the error is small for relatively recent times.
I think that this was dealt with, at least to some degree, in the article. But your second point, and my only one... still apply! Doesn’t RE ignores average runs scored, and IBB assumes all ball-fours are equal?
And Wooden ? Huh? Did you understand the article? Did ya stop reading after the first 100 words? Does one have to reply to comments that are “pre-answered” or don’t make sense?-
Wooden_U_Lykteneau ElegantMule -- Which part of my comment did you not understand? Is English not your first language?
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JinAZ Neat article, MGL, looking forward to the next part.
Minor comment: seems as though another factor to consider is the quality of the pitcher. I'd guess that the average pitcher in your "runner on 2nd and 3rd, one out" situations is worse than the average pitcher overall, simply because good pitchers don't get into that situation as often. This might be another reason that you're seeing the higher-than-expected wOBA after the intentional walk. And it's another reason to be careful about comparing actual rates to average rates in this situation.
-j
Links (2)
When to walk ‘em…
Published 5/16/2008 by Tangotiger (tangotiger@yahoo.com) at THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball
MGL takes it on, in part one.
Unintentional Consequences
Published 5/29/2008 by billfer at The Detroit Tiger Weblog
... stack up in frequency, they are tied for the league lead with the Blue Jays. The average AL team is at 12 this year so they are well above average. This is probably due in large part to the general struggles of the pitching staff. And there is probably a degree of over managing in these situations as well probably brought about by the struggles of the offense.
Surprisingly, there has been quite a bit written about the intentional walk already this season. MGL wrote a 2 part series at The Hardball Times. I recommend reading the articles of course, but here ...
Insteresting artcile, I have a couple questions, that may just show my lack of understanding of RE, but since no one else has commented I will go ahead.:
1) Does the RE with men on 2 and 3, 1 out, include all the times the next player walked (or reaches base to load the bases?) or is this only the RE when a play actually happens in this situation. I wonder this because it seems to me that if the RE is not independent then we somehow need to take out all the times that a batter reaches base without a run scoring or an out made, when men are on 2 and 3, because this could inflate the number of RE in the situation at hand.
2) Seems like the question should have as much to do with the percentage of times that less than the average RE happens when using the IBB and not solely the RE number. Because a grand slam by definition will score more runs than a 3-run HR EVERY time, I think this may skew the RE value when bases are loaded, therefore just looking at how often I expect the runs to be less than the avg RE in the scenarios would help me see if the IBB will give me a better chance of getting out of the inning. So I'd like to see how often 0 or 1 run is scored with bases loaded vs 0 or 1 when I don't load the bases.
Sorry if these question would be answered if I knew more details of RE, or maybe I'm looking more at WE with the way I am thinking of it, which you pointed out in the beginning of the article.