0-2

There you are, on your own 35 yard line.  As a courtesy, they bring out the chains, but you already know the answer -- you didn't make it.  4th and 1.  What do you call?  If you're and NFL coach, you probably punt.  Why?  Not because of the expectations.  On 1st and 10, 80% of running plays garner 1 yard or more.  I can believe that number drops on 4th and 1, but you are probably still more likely than not to get your first down.  It's true that turning the ball over on your own 35 can be costly, but I still think you give up too much.

So why do coaches do it?  Because they can read tomorrow's headlines already -- "Idiot turns over ball on own 35 yard line.  What a buffoon."

The shame of being second guessed outweighs statistical expectations.

Back to baseball

It's 0-2.  You look into the catcher, but you already know what he's looking for -- low and outside.  I don't understand this.  I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'm pretty sure I know what I would find for the Sox.  The majority of 0-2 pitches are low and outside.  Why?  Maybe this is the theory:

• He probably won't hit it
• He might strike out
• You can afford to give up a ball

Well, the 1st and 3rd bullets are probably right, but I can't say that I've seen a lot of strike-outs via low and outside on 0-2 pitches.  Why not?  Here's why not.  That's what the batter is looking for.  If that's where the balls goes, you'll get a weak foul (if it's close to a strike) or a ball (if it's not).

I think that pitchers give up too much here.  By avoiding 90% of the strike zone, they raise the batter's ability to stay alive.  They charge themselves an extra pitch -- a pitch they might wish they had back later in the game.  And for what?  Usually for the chance to do it again.  I can understand "low and outside" being the most likely location for an 0-2 pitch.  But if there was even a 50% chance that the 0-2 was going somewhere else, I think you'd see more strikeouts on 0-2, even low and away.

So how do I rate it?

Enough complaining.  How do I rate the outcomes on 0-2?  Here's how, in descending order from pitcher's best to batter's best:

1) Called strike

There will be some debate here, but my basic theory is this: The batter knows that he has to protect the plate on 0-2.  If he thought he could hold off and gets called out, you got him, but good.

2) Swinging strike

You really earned this on the first two pitches.  Now that the batter has to protect the plate, he's a little more at risk from surprise location, speed, etc.  Still, good on you, mate.

3) Weak hit in play

This is also part of what the pitcher earned.  The injured at-bat leads to an easy out.  I'll bet that good strikeout pitchers get more of these than average.  It's part of why K/9 is a useful metric -- good strikeout pitches get better results on non-strike out at bats.  But see the caveat at the end of this post...

4) Ball

This is really more about penalizing the pitcher than rewarding the batter.  I know, I know -- if it was a close pitch and the batter held off, you probably want to praise the batter's eye.  My guess is that, often, the batter was fooled and got lucky.

5) Foul, not straight back

River City's breaking and everybody's shaking.  I love those sequences where a batter takes 3+ pitches, after an 0-2 count, even when the pitcher ultimately wins.  It's a Pyrrhic victory.  For every 2 batters who manage this feat, the pitcher loses one at-bat at the end of the game.

6) Well hit -- in play or straight back

I regard those fouls (straight back) as almost as good as balls hit well into play (see this post for why).  And as a reminder, once the ball is hit into play, the pitcher has precious little to do with the result.  0-2 should create a low probability of this kind of a hit, so the batter really won this one.

Caveat

I have a few misgivings about #3 (weak hit) vs #5 (weak foul).  Why is a foul so good for the batter and a weak hit not?  Well, my thinking as follows: the foul was really the batter avoiding the strikeout in order to get another chance.  The ball-in-play ends the at bat (even if the lucky batter gets aboard).  The batter shouldn't be trying to earn that hit on 0-2, he should be trying to work towards a safer pitch count.  Allowing the ball to go in play is a poor outcome in my book.  But maybe I'm wrong.  Stay tuned...

Cheers,
jg

Revisions and Precision which a moment will reverse

In responding to my 0-0 post, Precision Blogger implies an interesting question that deserves its own post:

"Your ordering might penalize a certain kind of pitcher that does well. I think that baseball commentators want to see more of this kind of pitcher: the guy who believes in his stuff. He doesn't throw a lot of balls because he knows that usually, when a batter makes contact, he'll get the out. These pitchers risk some good, solid hits, but it's not that important when the batter makes good contact, because, overall, the pitcher expects to do well. Some aggressive pitchers of this type throw a lot of fastballs and give up more than an average share of home runs. They do well if their team can score, because they battle hard and don't give up big innings."

 As a reminder, my ranking of outcomes on the first pitch is:

1. Swinging strike
2. Weakly hit (in play, or foul ball -- regardless of outcome)
3. Well hit foul (not straight back, perimeter, or outside of the strike zone)
4. Called strike (perimeter)
5. Called strike (center of strike zone)
6. Well hit foul (not straight back, in the strike zone)
7. Ball (close)
8. Ball (not so close)
9. Well hit foul (straight back)
10. Well hit, in play (regardless of outcome)

With 1 being the the best a pitcher can do and 10 being the worst.  The implied question is "isn't there another class of pitcher that your rankings will under-rate?"

The short answer is yes.  The longer answer is no.  But the deeper answer is maybe. Allow me to explain.

Yes.

I have admitted this before, but I really can't admit it enough:  I'm not really a student of baseball.  I don't have the time.  Since I became a serious pitch counter, I have only had time to watch Red Sox games (plus playoff games).  It is quite possible that there are classes of pitchers that I just don't know that well because Theo Epstein doesn't like them.  So, I definitely allow for the possibility that I am unfairly decrementing those guys.

I will also add that PB's assessment probably describes a significant percentage of closers who get by on "looks" (velocity) alone.  Both Papelbon and Jenks might well fit that category.  I'll have to think about that more.

No.

The idea that a pitcher can be effective while giving up on strike outs has appeal, but -- on average -- the numbers don't back that up.  In 2010 there were:

• 165,353 at bats
• 42,554 of which resulted in hits
• 34,306 of which resulted in strike outs

So, the average batter batted .257.  But when the average batter didn't strike out, he batted .325.  How good is that?  There are only a handful of guys who batted .325 and didn't make it into the Hall of Fame.  Allowing batters to hit the ball turns the average batter into a Hall of Famer.

Maybe.

PB asks a question with which I have long been fascinated.  Are there any great starting pitchers who live by much quicker at bats but fewer strike outs?  There are two optics I like to use for starting pitchers that are in opposition:

• Strikeouts per nine innings
• innings per start.  

Take two pitchers with identical batting average against.  It would seem that the one who relied more on strikeouts would throw more pitches and fewer innings.  I feel like there ought to be some great pitchers who have fewer strike outs per nine innings. 

If you look at the 50 pitchers who put up the highest inning counts in 2010, 29 of them struck out 7 or more per inning. Only 10 struck out 6 or fewer.  The guy at the basement of this list was Mark Buerhle, best known for his perfect game in 2009 (he also came pretty close, with another no-hitter in 2007).  A quick look at his lifetime stats show that Buehrle has never been a huge strikeout guy.  In his abbreviated rookie season he approached 6.5 but only topped 6.0 once in the 10 years subsequent.  Maybe he's that guy.

I'll be watching this more closely.  Strikeouts per 9 is clearly a good indicator of pitcher longevity, but that doesn't mean it's the correct way to evaluate every kind of pitcher.

Cheers,
jg

0-0

I'd like to tell you how I evaluate the performance of the pitcher and the hitter on the first pitch of an at bat, but first I'd better set the table.

Absolute Perfection

What would a perfect game look like? I'm not talking about Don Larsen, I'm talking about Absolute Perfection. I think that you'd agree it would look like this: 81 swinging strikes. It can't get any better than that.

Think about those swinging strikes: Doc Gooden's split finger fastball, falling off the table. Keith Foulke's change-up, with the batter out in front. Tim Wakefield's 50 mph work of art or Mitch Williams' pitch, knocking both batter and pitcher off their feet. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Caught looking is nice, and fouls get the job done. But the essence of a swinging strike is pitching perfection. He thought he had you, but he never even touched you...

According to the baseball almanac, there have been some pretty perfect innings. 44 times, a pitcher has retired the side on 9 strikes, but only 44 times. And I'm guessing that this was never done on 9 swinging strikes, but I'll get into that in a minute.

The Batter Battle Book

So what does perfection look like from the opposite side? Harder to say. Is it a home run? After 10 pitches? 20? It's a little more open ended. To a certain extent, any non-out is a victory, but not all victories are created equal. Heck, I've watched Youk go down on 12 pitches and smiled watching him do so. What constitutes a victory is ambiguous, so it shouldn't be surprising that there are quite a few ambiguous first-pitch results which feel like wins -- or at least light losses -- for the batter. That will complicate the picture.

Clash of the Titans

Imagine Greg Maddux, one of the craftiest pitchers of all time, going against Rickey Henderson, the best lead-off hitter ever. Before a pitch is thrown, what are they thinking?

Well, Maddux knows what Henderson hits well and how the location of the pitch affects him. Maddux also knows his own limitations. His catcher can probably add some feedback on which pitches are working well today. Based on this information, they select a first pitch. But this doesn't tell us too much about what that first pitch will be. Maybe it will be based on what Henderson can't hit. Maybe it will be based on Maddux throws best. Maybe it will be neither, because that's what we least suspect.

How about Henderson? He knows almost everything that Maddux knows. He knows what he can hit. He knows what Maddux can throw. He probably even figured out what is working well by watching Maddux warm up. What doesn't he know? What Maddux decided to throw.

So what's Henderson's best strategy? Well, I would posit that Henderson has enough confidence to risk going down 0-1. And if he preps to swing at anything, he's going to risk making poor contact, followed by a weak out. So I think that his best strategy is guess a pitch and location. If he sees that pitch, he cranks it. If not, he let's it pass, even if that means taking the called strike.

This jibes with my experience, which is that a disproportionate amount of first pitches either called strikes or balls. You see other outcomes, but these two account for many of the first pitches. Just for grins, I looked at the last game of last season, truly one for the ages. The results weren't quite as clear cut as expected, but only because the 7th, 8th and 9th innings went nuts.

In the first 6 innings, Lincecum and Lee were beautiful, allowing 5 hits and no runs on a combined 12 innings. In those innings, here is the distribution of first pitches:

• 14 balls
• 13 strikes (looking)
• 14 others (including fouls, swinging strikes and hit into play)

Clearly not a uniform distribution. I think that the World Series would conform more to my expectations, because the average quality of both hitters and pitchers will be higher. It would be informative to look rigorously at all of the rest of the games and see which of the other categories increase.

Just for the heck of it, here are the next 3 innings results, including 5 hits and 4 runs in just 6 combined innings.

• 5 balls
• 4 strikes (looking)
• 15 everything else.

Yup. It was that ugly.

Measuring the outcome

So, enough table setting. Let's get on with it. Here's how I judge the outcome of various kinds of first pitch results:

Swinging strike. No matter how you look at it, the batter got owned. If we're talking about a run-of-the-mill Jacoby Ellsbury quality hitter, you can see why I credit the pitcher with a major win. But how much more-so for a Kevin Youkillis quality hitter? He thought it was his pitch and he still couldn't make contact...

Called strike. You have to give the nod to the pitcher -- he got what he needed to get done. But it's a weak victory. The batter may have let it go as a calculated risk -- better to risk a strikeout tomorrow than a ground-out today. And location matters. If it's on the perimeter, I credit the pitcher extra with achieving great location. Otherwise, it just wasn't where the batter wanted it.

Ball. Similarly, the ball has to be a victory for the batter, but it need not be a major one. If it was close to the strike zone, I give the pitcher an A for effort, but the batter still got the job done by not swinging.

In play. In play is tough, albeit not as tough as a foul. If the batter makes a weak connection, and the ball dribbles into play, well that's just one step above a swinging strike. If the batter went chasing a ball on the perimeter, again, you have to be impressed with the pitcher. Of course, if ball rings of the bat, you have to think that the batter won, plain and simple. Even on line-out to an infielder. This could be a slap hitter, able to dig out anything the pitcher throws (so, kudos). This could also be the situation I described above -- Henderson has out-thought Maddux and predicted the pitch. He may fly out to the warning track, but you can't ask him to do better.

So to sum up -- weakly hit -- victory to the pitcher. Well hit, victory to the batter.

Foul. Okay. Here we go. There are at least 3 things that I have to know before I can assign victory points:

• Quality of connection
• Pitch location
  
• Where the foul ball went

Quality of connection is the same point I made above -- if the batter just barely gets wood on the bat, that's one step above a swinging strike.

Pitch location is also important. If the ball was on the perimeter, or outside the strike zone, the batter was probably looking for it somewhere else. He got owned, even if he made good connection.

Finally, via Keith Hernandez again, there's a big difference between a foul straight back and one off to the sides. According to Hernandez, if the ball goes straight back, the only mistake the batter made was one of timing. He got the location right, but not the speed. The pitcher did alright, but it wasn't a big victory.

If the batter shoots the ball into the (non-fair) stands, well, there wasn't much else the batter could do with the ball. Think about those inside pitches which are ruled self-defense. The batter could have let it go for a ball, but swung and got a strike. Call that a victory for the pitcher. Maybe two steps above a swinging strike.

One more time.

So to sum up, here it goes, from best pitcher to best batter outcome:

1. Swinging strike
2. Weakly hit (in play, or foul ball -- regardless of outcome)
3. Well hit foul (not straight back, perimeter, or outside of the strike zone)
   
4. Called strike (perimeter)
5. Called strike (center of strike zone)
6. Well hit foul (not straight back, in the strike zone)
   
7. Ball (close)
8. Ball (not so close)
9. Well hit foul (straight back)
   
10. Well hit, in play (regardless of outcome)
    

That's my story, whether I stick to it or not.

Cheers,
jg