The long and the short of plate appearances
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The Hardball Times found this 8/6/2007 on www.hardballtimes.com [flag] |
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MLB
Comments (6)
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salb918 I tried looking at Johan Santana, and the sample was too small. I looked at pitchers with K/BB > 3, and the data look exactly the same. The next step would be to look for batters who have good strike zone judgement (either K/BB or some combo of K% and BB%) and see if there's anything there. I haven't done that yet.
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paulftodd Not sure why are you focusing on BIP here, and then in the same breath talking about HR's, which are not BIP. The outcome of a ball hit in fair territory, in play or HR is much more favourable on the 1st pitch than other pitches. In 2006 for example, the BA for all MLB on the 1st pitch was 341 but the average for all pitches was 269, including the 1st pitch. You state the HR rate is the same on the 1st pitch as all other pitches. It was not in 2006 (no time to check other years), the 1st pitch being hit fair results in a HR 4.4% of the time, while the rest is about 3.0%-3.3%.
Also, while your charts show the outs on BIP to be the same, as shown, if you include HR's, the outs when the ball is hit fair is 66% on the 1st pitch and 74% on the 2nd pitch and higher, which is a significant difference.
By including BIP and HR's in the analysis your article leads one to the conclusion that the outcome is not influenced by the pitch number, and it certainly is on the 1st pitch.
I think for clarity sake you could scrap the BIP and simply focus on BA for this distribution analysis
Maybe I misread something, if so, my apologies.
Actually, if you could do this same kind of analysis by count it would be interesting as well as there is great divergence in outcome say for 2-0 counts and 0-2 counts, while the average a ball hit fair on the 3rd pitch probably comes out close to what is the outcome on 1-1 count.
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salb918 Hi Paul,
Sorry for the confusion on BIP. The definition of BIP that I'm using here includes all fair balls, including home runs. Excluding HRs on BIP is standard practice for looking at pitchers. I don't know about hitters, but I always include HRs when looking at BIP for hitters.
My data for 2006 show that first pitch in play was a home run 4.1% of the time [HR/(PA-BB-K)] and 3.8% for all other pitches. I'm not sure where the discrepancy between your data and mine comes in. Can somebody else comment?
I don't understand where you're getting the 66%/74% numbers. Could you clarify?
Going by count is definitely something that would be interesting. I've looked at it a little bit in terms of sequences. Check out http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/thanks-for-the-memories/ for an example.
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fjm235 My data for 2006 show that first pitch in play was a home run 4.1% of the time [HR/(PA-BB-K)] and 3.8% for all other pitches. I'm not sure where the discrepancy between your data and mine comes in. Can somebody else comment?
I believe he made the fundamental error of comparing HR rates without excluding strikeouts. The clue lies in his comment about BA: BA for all MLB on the 1st pitch was 341 but the average for all pitches was 269. Of course BABIP is around .300 overall.
As I look at your last chart, it seems to me that there is a significant difference between pitches 1-6 and 7+. Singles are consistently around 20%, but extra base hits are more likely in long at bats, which means outs are less likely. Could you post the numbers?
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salb918 Have at it:
Pitches ALL BB K 1B 2B 3B HR OUTS (BIP) HITS 1 22869 0 0 4786 1470 150 940 15523 7346 2 31556 0 0 6560 2102 202 1209 21483 10073 3 33593 0 5441 6030 1812 183 1039 19088 9064 4 34105 2740 8850 4832 1396 153 781 15353 7162 5 30105 4620 8178 3594 1148 107 664 11794 5513 6 19667 3781 5281 2239 709 84 402 7171 3434 7 8374 1873 2089 947 282 33 208 2942 1470 8 3315 772 783 359 141 27 81 1152 608 9 1327 329 294 151 52 9 37 455 249 10 468 127 99 47 15 1 14 165 77 11 178 46 31 30 5 2 4 60 41 12+ 86 28 17 6 1 1 3 30 11
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Links (2)
The odds are against us
Published 8/6/2007 by Steve West at Go Rangers!
... On the other side of things, it didn’t even register with me that McCarthy was throwing so many pitches in his first inning, I just noticed the walks. Turns out he threw 31 pitches that inning, ended up with 104, just two less than McGowan, but McCarthy only made it through six innings. Letting guys take you deep into the count, especially early in the game, is what will end up hurting you, and that does seem to have been McCarthy’s biggest flaw, throwing lots of pitches but not many innings. In fact, six times now he has thrown 100 or more pitches this year, and another five over 90, and in all that time he’s only gotten past six innings one time. McCarthy really needs to work on getting that down, because the number of pitches he’s throwing is too high. As a matter of fact, just tonight Sal Baxamusa on The Hardball Times had an article on just this very thi ...
Welcome to the dirty Big XII
Published 8/6/2007 by Chip's Moody Blues at Uwe Blog
... Another excellent article by The Hardball Times, this time about plate appearances in baseball and the amount of pitches a batter sees. Then they ...
Great stuff, Sal.
On a individual level, did you stumble upon specific players that had a large enough sample size to suggest that they are extremely good at hitting the first pitch when they chose to?
I'd be curious to see that list, and also to see how far from the mean they are. I'd imagine it correlated with strike zone discipline in general.