It is a little difficult to say that after his Opening Day performance but it really wasn’t as bad as it looked. I would never say that I truly understand most of what the sabrmetric geeks say even though I’ve been accused of being one. But there is one thing that they believe that makes a lot of sense to me. When evaluating a pitcher ignore ERA and wins and loses and focus more on strike out to walk ratio, BABIP (batting average on balls in play), home runs per 9 innings and to a lesser extend ground ball to fly ball ratio. The most important thing to look at is BABIP. Master this stat and it will change how you look at pitching forever. Essentially the argument is that the only consistent way for a pitcher to succeed is to strike batters out. Once a batter has hit the ball, it is simply a function of chance and how good your team defense is if the batter will be out. When looking at a pitcher’s stats it is essential, especially early in the season, to look at his BABIP because he could be either the beneficiary of good luck or a goat of bad luck. Sometimes the ball is hit to fielders and sometimes it is not. On average a little under 30% of balls hit into play go for hits. So your average pitchers BABIP is going to be around .300. If you see a pitcher with a BABIP much higher or lower than .300, there will likely be a correction (I’ll talk about regression to the mean later). So what happened yesterday with Curt Schilling? He faced 22 batters, striking out 5 and walking 2 which is a respectable but not great 2.5/1 strikeout to walk ratio. Although there were quite a few well hit balls he gave up no homers. But they key stat to understanding the final score was that of the 15 balls that were put in play, 8 went for hits giving Schilling a horrible but unlucky .533 BABIP. And what about Schilling’s opponent Gil Meche? He faced 27 batters, striking out 6 and walking 1 (6/1 k/bb ratio). 20 balls were put in play and the Sox had 6 hits. What was Meche’s BABIP? Exactly .300. So the bottom line is that Meche did indeed outpitch Schilling but the bad luck shown in the poor BABIP had a lot to do with the final score.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Schilling Doesn't Suck (but he is fat)
It is a little difficult to say that after his Opening Day performance but it really wasn’t as bad as it looked. I would never say that I truly understand most of what the sabrmetric geeks say even though I’ve been accused of being one. But there is one thing that they believe that makes a lot of sense to me. When evaluating a pitcher ignore ERA and wins and loses and focus more on strike out to walk ratio, BABIP (batting average on balls in play), home runs per 9 innings and to a lesser extend ground ball to fly ball ratio. The most important thing to look at is BABIP. Master this stat and it will change how you look at pitching forever. Essentially the argument is that the only consistent way for a pitcher to succeed is to strike batters out. Once a batter has hit the ball, it is simply a function of chance and how good your team defense is if the batter will be out. When looking at a pitcher’s stats it is essential, especially early in the season, to look at his BABIP because he could be either the beneficiary of good luck or a goat of bad luck. Sometimes the ball is hit to fielders and sometimes it is not. On average a little under 30% of balls hit into play go for hits. So your average pitchers BABIP is going to be around .300. If you see a pitcher with a BABIP much higher or lower than .300, there will likely be a correction (I’ll talk about regression to the mean later). So what happened yesterday with Curt Schilling? He faced 22 batters, striking out 5 and walking 2 which is a respectable but not great 2.5/1 strikeout to walk ratio. Although there were quite a few well hit balls he gave up no homers. But they key stat to understanding the final score was that of the 15 balls that were put in play, 8 went for hits giving Schilling a horrible but unlucky .533 BABIP. And what about Schilling’s opponent Gil Meche? He faced 27 batters, striking out 6 and walking 1 (6/1 k/bb ratio). 20 balls were put in play and the Sox had 6 hits. What was Meche’s BABIP? Exactly .300. So the bottom line is that Meche did indeed outpitch Schilling but the bad luck shown in the poor BABIP had a lot to do with the final score.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I'm torn. I would love to call you a stat geek, slam Fatty for getting shelled by the lowly Royals, and call it a day. Yet, this was actually an informative and well explained post, including some information which I would never care enough to look up myself. So thanks, I guess. And Schilling sucks.
I am a little worried about what this stat analysis and the crappy state of the Yankees' infield defense means for our ace, Wang, who is a ground ball pitcher. He would probably win more games with a better defense.
just trying to find the common ground. i didn't go into it but beyond strike outs, getting a lot of ground balls is the next best thing. wang is a extreme ground ball pitcher which means he tends to not leave the ball up and give up a lot of home runs. and actually the yankees team defense was exceptional last year when measured by defensive efficiency which i'll explain later in my upcoming post on why alex gonzalez was not a great defensive shortstop.
16 years of trying to get you to say something good about the Yankees and all I had to do was compliment your statistical analysis.
I will admit I'm not immune to flattery but I didn't compliment the Yankees. I simply pointed out the truth.
p.s. Jeter is a whore.
Post a Comment