SB Nation - Zack Greinke

Beyond the Game Score: Park-Adjusted Game WAR

SFiercex4 — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:56:46 -0000

San Francisco Giants' Jonathan Sanchez, right, is embraced by catcher Eli Whiteside at the end of a baseball game after hearing that his no-hitter against the San Diego Padres Friday, July 10, 2009, in San Francisco, had the highest WAR total of the season among individual starts. Hug it out, gentlemen, what a great accomplishment! I'm getting a little teary-eyed just talking about it myself. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

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Recently, Crashburn Alley's Bill Baer did a piece on Game Score and consistency which found its way onto resident chief Tommy Bennett's No Pepper links. Apparently, Tommy's not a fan of Game Score, and neither am I.

I had been recently trying to come up with a way to adjust Game Score for defense and park, maybe attempt a shot at a new Game Score formula for batted balls. This seemed like an interesting side project to tackle until VEP posted this one-line gem:

I just use Game WAR.

I was floored. What an simple yet elegant concept. I decided to have some fun with the data and throw out some Game WAR numbers for the BtB readership. Here's what I did.

Methodology

I took all non-Interleague starts this season with a Game Score over 80. I decided to exclude Interleague games to eliminate the need to determine average run support in an Interleague game (in retrospect, I suppose I could have used NL/AL average runs/game in Interleague play, but I already did the work, so take that). For what it's worth, I had to remove seven games from the sample of total starts with a Game Score above 80. This left me with 121 starts, ranging from Jonathan Sanchez's no-hitter (Game Score of 98) to Randy Johnson's April 19th start against the Arizona Diamondbacks (Game Score of 80). Of the 9276 starts made outside of Interleague play this season, this supposedly represents the best 1.3% of starts this season.

For my methodology for pitcher WAR, I used FIP as the run-determining metric to separate defense from pitching, mostly because of ease. I took all the relevant FIP statistcs (strikeouts, walks, hit-by-pitches, intentional walks, and home runs) and calculated FIP, using 3.19 as the scalar to ERA (the NL should have been 3.18 and the AL should have been 3.20, but these points shouldn't matter all that much). I park-adjusted the pitcher's FIP according to Patriot's five-year regressed park factors and stuck the inputs into Pythagenpat. Since all of Patriot's factors are already adjusted to account for players playing half their games at their home park, I reversed the adjustments for this exercise by doing the following:

PFGmWAR = [(PF-1)*2] + 1

This was done to get pure run inflation/deflation values for each park.

I used NL and AL non-Interleague average runs scored as the run support component. I used a .380 win% pitcher as replacement level.

Just for fun, I also decided to look at an old question brought up by Jeff of Lookout Landing, regarding A.J. Burnett and the myth of inconsistency. I grabbed game logs for three Yankees, Burnett, Andy Pettitte, and C.C. Sabathia, during the 2009 season and calculated Game WAR. I also took a look at [Game +1 WAR - Game WAR] (difference between consecutive starts).

The Numbers

I have all of the 121 starts listed in this Google spreadsheet for your perusal, but here I'll list the top 10 Game Scores of the season with relevant data and game WAR. I'll also then list the top 10 Game WAR games with data and Game Scores.

Ranked by Game Score

Gscr Rk	GmWAR Rk	Player	Date	Opp	IP	K	BB	FIP/0.92	GmWAR	Gscr
1	1	Jonathan Sanchez	7/10	SDP	9	11	0	0.81	0.56	98
T-2	T-33	Chris Carpenter	9/7	MIL	9	10	2	1.78	0.44	93
T-2	T-28	Mark Buehrle	7/23	TBR	9	6	0	2.02	0.45	93
T-4	T-5	Cliff Lee	8/19	ARI	9	11	0	1.17	0.53	92
T-4	T-16	Justin Verlander	5/8	CLE	9	11	2	1.54	0.49	92
T-6	T-44	Roy Halladay	9/4	NYY	9	9	3	2.38	0.40	91
T-6	T-22	Cole Hamels	9/1	SFG	9	9	1	1.66	0.47	91
T-6	T-24	Tim Lincecum	6/29	STL	9	8	0	1.54	0.46	91
T-6	T-19	Jeff Niemann	6/3	KCR	9	9	1	1.66	0.48	91
T-10	T-37	Carlos Zambrano	9/25	SFG	9	8	1	1.90	0.43	90

Note: There were three other games listed at Game Score of 90, I just listed the first one on the list for convenience.

Ranked by Game WAR

GmWAR Rk	Gscr Rk	Player	Date	Opp	IP	K	BB	FIP/0.92	GmWAR	Gscr
1	1	Jonathan Sanchez	7/10	SDP	9	11	0	0.81	0.56	98
T-2	T-36	Zack Greinke	5/4	CHW	9	10	0	1.05	0.55	85
T-2	T-36	Tim Lincecum	4/18	ARI	8	13	0	0.00*	0.55	85
T-2	T-57	Zack Greinke	4/18	TEX	9	10	0	1.05	0.55	83
T-2	T-23	Tim Lincecum	7/27	PIT	9	15	3	0.93	0.55	87
T-6	T-91	Ricky Nolasco	9/30	ATL	7.67	16	2	0.00*	0.53	81
T-6	T-4	Cliff Lee	8/19	ARI	9	11	0	1.17	0.53	92
T-8	T-75	Roy Halladay	9/25	SEA	9	9	0	1.29	0.52	82
T-8	T-19	Zack Greinke	4/24	DET	9	10	1	1.41	0.52	88
T-8	T-14	Wandy Rodriguez	7/8	PIT	9	11	1	1.17	0.52	87

*These games actually recorded negative FIP, but that of course broke the Pythagorean equation (at least on Excel). For those games I used a FIP of 0.

What do we see in these two lists? Well first off, none of these games are actually bad. There were a few games in the overall list in which pitchers had mediocre Three True Outcomes performances but allowed few hits and runs, resulting in good Game Scores but mediocre WAR totals. But in the top 10 performances, there were no poor performances to be shown, unsurprisingly. Also, the top 10 Game WAR list is comforting because it contains a lot of names from whom we would expect to see great starts, particularly Cy Young winners Zack Greinke and Tim Lincecum. As a whole, these 121 games totaled 45.5 WAR if added up (which I know isn't really the correct method for calculating the WAR as a whole, but it likely comes close) in 1027 innings, a rate of 0.40 WAR/ 9 innings. Only Roy Halladay's start versus the Yankees came out as "average" for the sample.

That being said, there is not a whole lot of agreement between the two lists. Only two games appear in both lists, Cliff Lee's Philadelphia start versus Arizona and the overall leader, Sanchez's no-hitter against the Padres. In the 121-start sample, the R-squared of between Game Score and Game WAR was 0.26, and this should come as no surprise. Pitchers receive the full credit for all aspects of the game under Game Score, while FIP attempts to separate out defensive contributions. The strikeouts, walks/HBP, and home runs are there, but the remainder of the hits and outs are not credited to the pitcher in FIP.

When looking at the Game Score formula, I found that it weights innings pitched very heavily, as it gives bonus points for innings pitched/outs made after the fourth inning. When looking at the top 50 performances by Game Score, only 10 starts were of less than nine innings, and only one lasted less than eight. In the entire sample, 51 starts lasted fewer than nine innings. When ranked by Game WAR, 18 performances of less than nine innings made the top 50. I do think that shows some bias towards complete games that isn't reflected in the Game WAR ranking.

The home run, on the other hand, was punished more severely in the Game WAR system than the Game Score system. The first start to contain a home run when ranking by Game Score was Javier Vazquez's 6/11 start against Pittsburgh, ranked 32nd on the list. He struck out 12 and walked none in eight innings, picking up a 2-1 loss (and people think he pitched poorly!). However, when ranked by Game WAR, the first appearance of a home run comes from Gavin Floyd's 9/5 start against Boston, in which he gives up one homer, while striking out 11 and walking none in eight innings. That start is ranked 58th. Vazquez's start is ranked 63rd. While Game Score weights your average home run at maybe -2 to -3 points on a scale beginning at 50, home runs have a much more staggering weight on performance in WAR, especially at such low inning totals. Allowing one homer in nine innings of play already starts your FIP at 4.63, well below the league average of around 4.3-4.4. As a comparison, when tallying all the statistics of these games as a unit, the average game FIP was 2.02 in these 121 games.

Some more interesting notes:

- Lincecum appears three times on the list, and Greinke appears four times. As you saw in the Game WAR top 10, two of each of their starts appear, in alternating order, tied for second on the list with 0.55 WAR. Amazing seasons.

- The most victimized team was, unsurprisingly, the Pittsburgh Pirates. The team appeared ten times as opponents, being victimized for 4.1 WAR.

- The worst start, after park adjustment, belongs to Chris Carpenter, who struck out three and allowed one homer among three hits in a complete game against Cincinnati.

- Dan Haren was the only pitcher to allow more than one home run, giving up two solo jacks among 10 strikeouts and no walks in nine innings in a 7-2 win against the Chicago Cubs.

- There were four starts made in San Diego, with an average Game Score of 82 but an average Game WAR of 0.26. Unsurprisingly, there were no starts in Colorado, though i suspect after park adjustment, a few Coors Field starts would do well in the Game WAR method.

Consistency Talk

As I mentioned, I collected the game logs for three Yankees starters for 2009, Burnett, Pettitte, and Sabathia. I uploaded them here for your viewing pleasure; the WAR and Game Score details are the end of the sheet for each player.

Here are the average and standard deviations for each player.

Player	Avg GmWAR	StdDev	Avg GmWARDiff	StdDev
A.J. Burnett	0.11	0.16	0.00	0.26
Andy Pettitte	0.12	0.15	-0.02	0.17
C.C. Sabathia	0.18	0.16	0.00	0.21

GmWARDiff refers to the difference in GmWAR between consecutive starts. I don't really think standard deviation is the way to go to measure something like this, and Jeff Zimmerman has said that doing something that breaks down performance into buckets with assigned percentage chances of the pitcher's team winning would be more appropriate. Perhaps using Game WAR would be more beneficial in this methodology, since Game WAR is technically representative of a fraction of an actual win during a game.

Still, if you take this at face value, you can see that, as Jeff pointed out, the standard deviations between actual start values aren't all that different between the three pitchers, only one of which has a reputation as an inconsistent pitcher. If you take the standard deviation of the pitcher's start-to-start differences, Burnett does seem to have a higher value, signifying that he is "more inconsistent," though I don't think it's all that worse than Sabathia.

I think this was an interesting look, and if I get a chance (i.e. time) a little bit later, I might pick up all of the game logs for 2009 and check out FIP-WAR for each of them. I certainly think that, if we wanted to compare individual game performances, this would be a better way to go than using Game Score.

Raygu's MDC Mock Draft Results

raygu — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:30:11 -0000

I participated in a mock draft over at Mock Draft Central today and here is how the first two rounds went:

Round 1

5. Matt Kemp

6. Ryan Braun

7. Chase Utley

8. Miguel Cabrera

9. Prince Fielder

10. Ryan Howard

11. Evan Longoria

12. David Wright

Round 2 after the jump:

Round 2

1. Joe Mauer

5. Ian Kinsler

10, Jason Bay

11. Victor Martinez

12. Zack Greinke

This draft definitely didn't go as I expected, and I don't think there were alot of "autopicks", but I could be wrong.

Poll

Which pick was more surprising?

Interview with Derek Carty from The Hardball Times-Part 2

raygu — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:00:12 -0000

Here is part 2 of the 4-part interview with Derek Carty from The Hardball Times:

Fake Teams: I see you are not a fan of FIP for evaluating starting pitchers and like LIPS instead. Where does one find the LIPS calculated? I haven't seen it published as widely as FIPS.

Derek Carty: Unfortunately, LIPS isn't available anywhere publically - not right now, anyway. It was published in HEATER Magazine this past season for their subscribers, and occasionally I'll post a leaderboard at THTF, but we don't currently have it on our stat pages. There is some good news on this front, though, for those looking for LIPS. There are preliminary plans in the works to sell a StatPack, of sorts, at THT Fantasy later this off-season. This StatPack will include scores of interesting data for fantasy owners to peruse and use for their draft preparations. I'm planning to include a lot of my homemade stats (some of which I'll discuss a bit later in this interview), LIPS, and a bunch of other goodies. I'm hoping this will be an invaluable tool for fantasy owners.

Back on topic, you're absolutely right about me: I am 100% opposed to FIP for fantasy analysis. I believe you're referring to this article that I wrote, but to summarize my stance, FIP uses a pitcher's actual HRs- a huge ‘no-no'. Analysis has found (not even all that recently) that a pitcher has very little control over his HR/FB rate. He does have a lot of control over how many balls get hit on the ground (which obviously can't become HRs), but once a ball is put in the air, the pitcher has relatively little control over whether it clears the fences for a HR. FIP doesn't account for this, making it extremely inaccurate for pitchers with abnormal HR/FB rates and merely somewhat inaccurate for everyone else. While I understand LIPS isn't readily available right now, xFIP is, and this at least adjusts for HR/FB, if not for everything that LIPS does. Baseball Prospectus's QERA is also a solid choice. I can't help but cringe every time I see a statistically-inclined site mention FIP in regard to predicting future performance or in discussing luck. There's nothing unlucky about a pitcher with a 5.00 ERA and a 4.00 FIP if his HR/FB is 4%.

More after the jump:

Fake Teams: Recently I have written a few articles on what stats help one to predict wins for a starting pitcher, and realized there really is not one single stat that does it. What stats do you look at when targeting starting pitchers?

Derek Carty: To be completely honest with you, I ignore Wins entirely. They are so riddled with noise that I don't bother with them at all. They don't even get a glance from me. If I'm looking to gauge a pitcher's win potential, I'll check out an expected Win stat I've whipped up, comprised mostly of the skills of the pitcher and the quality of his offense. As far as his skills go, strikeout rate, walk rate, and groundball rate are the three biggies. They are under the pitcher's control much more than other stats are. This probably isn't big news to your readers, however, who I imagine are pretty familiar with DIPS Theory (if not, feel free to shoot me an e-mail. I'd be happy to discuss).

As I said earlier, though, I'm not always content with sticking to what's available - sometimes I like to take things a step or two further. Last year, I did this for pitchers with the ‘creation', if you will, of CAPS (Context Adjusted Pitching Statistics). CAPS still focuses on defense-independent stats like Ks, BBs, and GBs, but it seeks to remove even more noise from the equation - from the peripheral stats themselves. For example, a pitcher facing a disproportionate amount of Adam Dunn-type hitters will strikeout and walk a disproportionate number of batters and allow too many flyballs and home runs. Because the act of facing these kinds of batters isn't a skill of the pitcher's, we should adjust for it. After all, his mix of batters going forward is likely to be randomized, not marred with 3TO hitters like Dunn. Last off-season, I rigged up CAPS to adjust for home ballpark, mix of road ballparks, quality of opposition, and league changes. CAPS totally nailed Javier Vazquez - who was critical to my LABR strategy and success - among a few others, and I believe the logic and reasoning behind it is quite sound. Without divulging too much, this off-season I plan on bringing several more context adjustments into the mix as well as creating a CAPS of sorts for hitters (CABS, I suppose it'll be called). I'm currently in the research process now for some of these adjustments and am very excited for what CAPS could end up turning up.

Finally, I'll occasionally mix in a few somewhat subjective feelings based upon PITCHf/x data. If I really like the pitches a guy is throwing or something else the about the data, I might put a little asterisk next to his name on my sheet, even if he hasn't totally proven himself yet. Call him a sleeper or an upside pick or whatever you wish, but that's the general idea. Max Scherzer was a guy I really liked this year despite his lack of a real track record. I particularly loved the change-up he throws. Zack Greinke was another - four good pitches and a fantastic slider. Until we can really build some predictive models out of PITCHf/x, though, this kind of thing will be merely supplementary to the hard numbers, at least for me.

Thanks for the Stories

Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:01:12 -0000

As a writer (very loose term there), I find there are certain topics and people that I can easily fall back on because there is plenty of material and interest in them. I would like to thank the following people and topics for making my job (another term used loosely) easier:

Miguel Olivo
Zack Greinke
Derek Jeter
Derek Jeter's Defense
Yankee's Payroll
Umpires
Omar Minaya
Steve Phillips
Dayton Moore
Dusty Baker
Bud Selig
Mets' Training Staff
Adam Dunn
Trading Roy Halladay
Joe Morgan
Jeff Francoeur
Milton Bradley's OBP/Temper
The designated hitter

I am sure there are a few candidates I missed, but just keeping up with the above list will keep me writing for a while.

What Can Be Learned From the AL MVP Voting?

Jeff Zimmerman (TucsonRoyal) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:40:29 -0000

More photos » by Reinhold Matay - AP

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On Monday afternoon, I fully expect Joe Mauer to win his first MVP award after finishing sixth in 2006 and fourth last year. Joe led the AL in batting average while hitting for respectable power (28 HRs) in only 138 games, most of which were as a catcher. He led the Twins into the postseason after they trailed by three games with only four games left, thereby forcing and winning a playoff game with Detroit.

Other than Mauer winning, I expect Mark Teixeria to finish high in the voting after leading the league in HRs and RBIs (categories that have traditionally been important to voters). I also expect Derek Jeter to finish high even though he doesn't have great traditional stats this season (.334 AVG, 18 HR and 107 runs scored). He did have one of his best years with a 7.4 WAR value, his highest since Fangraphs began keeping track and his third-highest total when compared to Rally's WAR ranking.

Truthfully, I have no problem giving the award to Mauer. He had a great season and helped the Twins to the playoffs. The real question with today's vote, to me anyway, is where do Zack Greinke and Ben Zobrist end up in the rankings?

Using WAR values as a guide, both Zack (9.4 WAR) and Ben (8.6 WAR) had a better season than Joe (8.4 WAR). The problem is that the mainstream media is barely touting if at all Greinke or Zobrist. Going to MLB.com, Zack gets an honorable mention while Ben gets no mention (though four of Ben's teammates got mentioned: Evan Longoria, Jason Bartlett, Carl Crawford and Carlos Pena). At cbssportsline.com and USAToday.com they have no mention of either Greinke or Zobrist.

Two groups of internet voters have released their results. SBN, our parent website, had a vote and Zack came in sixth overall, while Ben came in second. When the Internet Baseball Awards released their results, Zack came in fourth and Ben came in sixth. I really don't expect either of these players to finish as that high in the final votes with the BBWAA, even though no two players in the AL did more to help their team win games this last season.

Let's look at how Zack and Ben final voting placement can say something about the makeup and thought process of the BBWAA.

Zack Greinke - Do pitchers even matter in the MVP voting?

Here is a little background on how pitchers have done in the MVP voting:

Since 1956, when the Cy Young Award was created, a pitcher has won the MVP Award 8 times or 8% percent of the time. Before the Cy Young was created, pitchers won the award about 1 in 5 times (19%).
The last pitcher to win the MVP was Dennis Eckersley in 1992.
Since 1992, the average final position for the top pitcher vote getter is 8.4, with Pedro Martinez about winning the award in 1999 by finishing with only 3% less vote than Ivan Rodriguez.

There is not much precedent for MVP voters voting for pitchers, especially ones with 16-8 records. The average finish of the top pitcher in the MVP voting has been between the 8th and 9th spot, so this makes a good dividing line to see if the writers noticed Zack's great season (despite the horrible defense and run support he had all season). Zack had the 31st highest ranked season ever in ERA+ with 205, which is the highest total since 2003 when Pedro Martinez finished with an ERA+ of 210.

If Zack finishes eighth or higher, hats off to the voters. If ninth or lower, shame on voters.

Ben Zobrist - Do name familiarity and defense matter in the MVP voting?

Before the season, many people were familiar with the final MVP candidates, but few were familiar with Ben, and the few that knew of him didn't expect great production. Offensively, his 2009 season was nothing to laugh about (9th in the AL in Runs Created), but his defense is where he separated himself from the others for the top WAR values for positional players. He had a UZR rating of 26.4 which was good for 2nd best among all position players in the AL.

The question is, "Will any of this production really matter." Even though the Internet voters gave Ben quite a bit of love, I can see the BBWAA giving him a cold shoulder. I would be surprised to see him break the top 10. I really want to see the percentage of voters that put him in their top 5. This will give a nice understanding of the percentage of voters that look at and use WAR (or similar metrics) to compare players. If the percentage of voters that put Ben in the top 5 is above 10%, I will be amazingly surprised.

---

The award season for MLB is a nice time to look back at the the players that had a great season. The problem is that sometimes players that should receive recognition don't.

Zack Greinke and Tim Lincecum by LOWESS

Tommy Bennett — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:51:51 -0000

Today it was announced that Tim Lincecum would join Zack Greinke as this year's second Cy Young award winner. Both had excellent seasons. While Greinke likely has the edge due to Lincecum's more favorable league and park, both exhibited no real weakness. Both struck out more than a batter per inning, both walked fewer than three batters per nine innings, and both allowed fewer than a dozen home runs.

After Greinke's furious start, there was some concern that his superlative season might be lost as he bumped slightly in the middle of the season. Lincecum, by comparison, appeared to be more consistent: he had no string of dominance as convincing as Greinke's April, but neither did he have any periods in which he struggled.

I decided to calculate each pitcher's single-game FIP and xFIP (based on batted ball data from FanGraphs) and run it through the R CLI. I then applied a LOWESS regression to each pitcher's season to give an idea of how each pitcher's fortunes changed from month to month. Here they are, by FIP (click to enlarge):

xFIP comparison below the jump.

Interestingly enough, because of Greinke's higher FB percentage (40.5% to Lincecum's 33.3%), Lincecum's xFIP LOWESS regression is lower than Greinke's for most of the year.

It's worth noting that there is a great deal of noise in all of these plots. What LOWESS does is apply a local polynomial regression; you can think of it as an improved moving average. For those who are curious, I used a smoothing factor of 2/3.

Is this a helpful way to visualize a pitcher's season? I'm curious what you think!

Tim Lincecum Wins Second Consecutive NL Cy Young

GameFish — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:41:05 -0000

Tim Lincecum had fewer first-place votes than Adam Wainwright, fewer second-place votes than Chris Carpenter, and fewer victories than any pitcher to win the award in a non-strike season. But none of that stopped him from being awarded the Cy Young by the Baseball Writers Association of America for the second consecutive year:

Lincecum repeated as the National League Cy Young Award winner, besting St. Louis right-handers Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright despite getting fewer first-place selections than Wainwright in the vote conducted by the Baseball Writers' Association of America and announced on Thursday.
Lincecum (15-7, 2.48 ERA, 261 strikeouts) received 11 first-place votes and 100 points. Carpenter (17-4, 2.24 ERA, 144 strikeouts) finished second with nine first-place votes and 94 points, followed by Wainwright (19-8, 2.63 ERA, 212 strikeouts), who had 12 first-place votes and 90 points.

Carpenter also had more second-place votes -- 14 to 12 -- than Lincecum, who became the pitcher with the lowest victory total to win a Cy Young in either league. The previous low win total for a Cy Young winner was 16, by Zack Greinke of the Royals earlier this week and Brandon Webb of the D-backs in 2006. Both of those pitchers went 16-8.

Whatever the opposite of a landslide is, that's the margin with which Lincecum won the award, in what was one of the closest races in Cy Young history. But regardless, just two full seasons into his Major League career, Tim Lincecum has two Cy Youngs under his belt. He's got to be feeling pretty high (in the perfectly legal sense of the word, of course).

Exactly How Awesome is Zack Greinke?

Justin Bopp — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:40:04 -0000

Poll

What should Zack Greinke do in the off season?

Mow Lawns.

37 votes

Play this World of Warcraft game.

153 votes

Man, I love Zack Greinke.

180 votes

370 votes | Poll has closed

The Curves of Zack Greinke

Harry Pavlidis — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:00:15 -0000

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Zack Greinke earned the 2009 Cy Young Award earlier today. It was well deserved, and not much of a surprise. I've covered Greinke via PITCHf/x on a few occasions* (here, here, here, here and here), so I'm taking this opportunity to look at Greinke's curveball -- which is thrown at a wide range of speeds.

*If you check out those links, you'll see some flight paths, learn about his sinker, compare his

fastball locations to Rich Harden's and explore head-to-head match-ups against Kevin Milwood and John Lackey.

Greinke's best pitch is his slider. It's one of the best pitches in baseball, and he complements it with two above average fastballs (four- and two-seam varieties), a change-up and the aforementioned curveballs. For starters, Greinke can vary his pitch speeds by nearly 40 mph -- high 90s fastball and a low 60s curveball.

But Greinke's curve is thrown anywhere from the lower 60s up to the lower 80s.

Greinke's average curveball is around 75 mph. I split them into three groups, making the cut-offs at 72 and 78 mph. Before doing that, I classified all of his pitches (7512 going back to 2007). It was important to keep the curves and sliders apart, especially at their respective upper and lower speed ranges. I can't say I'm 100% accurate in my splitting of pitches, but I'm more than satisfied with the results.*

*mostly manual folks, it's hard to automate the classification of pitches that are that close together. Not that "we" aren't trying.

Here's where I ended up with Mr. AL Cy Young 2009's curveball.

speed	#	MPH
fast	128	82.8
regular	235	74.9
slow	154	68.6
	517	75.0

Good mix. Obviously, we've wandered into the land of small sample sizes. Put on your error bar goggles.

speed	In Wide Zone	B:CS	Swing	Chase	Watch
fast	.445	2.9	.563	.437	.281
regular	.604	1.0	.319	.194	.585
slow	.571	1.6	.448	.303	.432
	.555	1.4	.418	.300	.477

Unless he's putting something extra on it, it's a strike. Well, it's a strike for more often than the average pitch (.53).

The relative wildness (for lack of a better term) on the faster variety serves a purpose. It gets more swings, especially out of the zone, than the slower varieties.

Opponents rarely seemed to swing at the main group of curves, taking a lot of strikes (nearly 6 of 10).

There is a difference already, with the slow group actually sitting in between the fast and regular in all the categories above. But now things start to change.

speed	Whiff
fast	0.375
regular	0.173
slow	0.348
	0.296

The changes in speed seem to help. Remember, both the fast and slow are chased out of the zone more often, which helps those whiff rates.

Hitters do make contact, quite often, and here's what happens.

speed	GB%	FB%	PU%	LD%	HR/FL%
fast	50%	25%	0%	25%	17%
regular	49%	29%	3%	20%	6%
slow	32%	35%	10%	23%	0%
	43%	30%	4%	22%	6%

HR/FL is home runs per fly ball + line drive (average is around 7%, your park may vary).

I love ground balls as much (if not more) than most baseball fans, but I'll take the slow curve. Pop-ups are almost automatic outs. And in the off chance that home run rate is not a fluke....

The last measure are the run values. rv100 is runs allowed per 100 pitches relative to the league (MLB 2007-9) average. Negative numbers are better for pitchers. rv100E is the same thing, but batted ball outcomes (hits and outs, homers and singles) are discarded and league average rates for batted ball type (grounder, liner) are used instead. In other words, a ground ball is 3 parts out an 1 part single*, no matter what actually happened.

*not exactly, but you get my point

speed	rv100	rv100E
fast	-0.93	-1.85
regular	-0.11	-0.55
slow	-0.48	0.30
	-0.43	-0.62

Go figure. Fast wins, both ways.

In case you're wondering, Greinke's 2009 slider had a rv100 of -3.18 and a rv100E of -2.72.

Greinke's favorite time to throw the slow curve was when he was ahead of right-handed batters. In 0-1, 1-2 and 0-2 counts, it was his choice just under 10% of the time. On 0-0 counts against, it checked in close to 9%, and wasn't used in any other situation more than 5%. The most common usage against lefties was, again, when he was ahead, but just over 4% of those situations saw the slow curve. He did not throw the slow curve, except for rare occasions, when behind in the count.

The fast curve was most frequently used when ahead or even, against both lefties and righties. In those counts, it was around 7-8%. Again, it was least likely to b used when behind.

Helping push first pitch curves to righties to nearly 1 in 4, Greinke used the regular speed curve was on nearly 15% of first pitches against right-handed batters in 2009. He was willing to use the regular curve when behind in the count (perhaps aware of the accuracy and Watch rate). Still, when he chose to throw a curveball when ahead, it was usually fast or slow.

Felix, Greinke, And Some Reflecting

Jeff — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:43:58 -0000

May 19th, they say, was the turning point. Following a rough start against the Angels in which he gave up a bunch of hits and a bunch of stolen bases, Felix was called out by Don Wakamatsu for a lack of focus and determination, and from then on it was like night and day. Beginning the next weekend with eight innings against San Francisco, Felix ripped off a four-month streak the likes of which few have ever seen. Over his final 25 games, Felix would allow just 40 earned runs while turning in 24 quality starts, and Wakamatsu was praised by many as the manager that finally got through to our ace of frustration. Felix, it seemed, had arrived, and either because of Wakamatsu or by sheer coincidence, the sentiment has been that something clicked that night in May, turning Felix into the guy we'd been waiting for him to become.

And, sure enough, that guy is amazing. We've all heard of lucky ERAs, but it's hard to fluke your way to a 1.98 over 182 innings. From May 24th through the end of the season, Felix was both a shutdown righty and a workhorse, keeping the opponent off the board while not once throwing fewer than 101 pitches. It was like the best of both worlds, as Felix partnered Rich Harden's effectiveness with Roy Halladay-level durability, and it was a performance many feel would've won Felix the Cy Young had he been able to sustain it all year. It was that first month and a half, they say, that wound up holding him back.

They're probably right, in that had Felix run a 1.98 ERA over a full season, voters would've had a hell of a time placing him second. But while Felix's streak was extraordinary, it may actually serve to make the strongest case in Greinke's favor. Just look at the following comparison:

Stat	Felix, post-5/19	Greinke, year
ERA	1.98	2.16
RA	2.67	2.51
FIP	3.01	2.33
IP/start	7.2	6.9
Pit/start	109.6	105.4
BB%	7.2%	5.6%
K%	21.9%	26.4%
HR%	1.4%	1.2%

From May 24th through the end of the season, Felix pitched as well as we've seen him in four years. He proved himself to his coaches, he proved himself to opponents, and he proved himself to a fanbase that'd been waiting to see him take his game to the next level. Felix's turnaround is seen as his ascent. His ascent to the top, his ascent into the upper echelon of pitchers in the world. His ascent to the throne.

And Greinke was still better.

Greinke's ERA, Greinke's FIP, Greinke's tRA...not only was Greinke better than Felix in 2009, he was better than Felix at his best in 2009, and he was better than the 12 starts we got out of Felix in 2005. The hot streak that was supposed to legitimize Felix's candidacy instead works for Greinke, because Greinke was better than that hot streak, and he was better over a full season.

You could, of course, argue that Greinke kind of got lucky with his home run rate, that 11 in 33 starts for a flyball pitcher isn't a sustainable level of performance. And you'd probably be right. Greinke will almost certainly allow a higher rate of home runs going forward. But while projections and regressions look forward, statistics look backward, and the fact of the matter is that, along with all of his other achievements, Greinke only threw 11 pitches that got hit out of the park last year. Only 11 of his pitches had the necessary characteristics such that the opposing batter was able to hit a home run, and though that likely isn't repeatable, it's what happened, and it's one of the reasons why this will go down as one of the least-debated Cy Youngs of all time.

Felix's May 19th light switch was his strongest argument for the award. And when a player's strongest argument turns out to support his competition, that leaves absolutely no doubt as to who deserves to win. Would I take Greinke as the better starting pitcher going forward? I'm not sure. That one would require more thought. But an assertion that requires no further thought at all is that, in 2009, Zack Greinke was the best pitcher in the world. Congratulations to one eccentric son of a bitch.