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

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

Howdy!

If I have anything to add to the global conversation about the Red Sox, it's this: I am an inveterate pitch counter with a Bayesian / Predictive Modeling background. Hopefully that will provide some entertainment...

What is a Bayesian approach to pitch counting? Well it starts like this. Before the first pitch is thrown, I make two assumptions:

1) The average starter pitcher lobs 100 pitches over the plate over course of a game. The best pitchers will go over that -- even into the 120s. A pitcher having a bad day (even a star) will often fall short.

2) The average inning takes about 15 pitches. 105 pitches, on average, should take you through the 7th. Good innings go under 15 pitches. Bad innings can be interminable. If you only get 100 pitches (on average) to start with, throwing 30 pitches in the first inning means you've just lost the 7th inning.

The following observation is also important:

The middle relief staff is the weak underbelly of any pitching staff. The more innings they have to pitch the higher the probability of the other team winning.

So, with that in mind, every single pitch changes the probabilities of the outcome of the game. If the pitcher gets through the 1st on just 12 pitches, he has increased the probability of making it through the 7th (and dare I say 8th?). But it runs deeper than that. Throwing a ball on the first chance increases the expected total pitches in that at bat. It also increases the probability that future strikes will get hit into play, and maybe even fall for hits.

As I watch games, I take note of how the game hinges on these individual pitches, and that's what I intend to share.

Caveats

Before I begin, I should add two caveats. the first is that, I'm a busy guy. This means that I don't have time to test my theories quantitatively. If someone already has, I'm always happy to change my theories when faced with evidence to the contrary. This also means that I only watch Red Sox games. And "watch" should be in quotes -- I don't own a TV. I follow games on mlb.com. So I only learn from those pitchers I get to see, which can be limiting.

Second, I've toyed with blogs before. I offer no promises. Maybe this one will last as long as some of the last (2 of which survived more than a year). Maybe I won't make it through the season. If you like what you see, feel free to leave me a comment. Like every pitch, every comment influences the probability of future outcomes.

Cheers,
jg