SB Nation User Blog: DriverZn

Cardinals throwing fewer changeups.

DriverZn — Thu, 08 May 2008 02:57:02 -0000

An interesting note came up in a recent game thread. Our pitchers seem to throw fewer changeups than one would expect. To see if this is my imagination or possible real, I looked at the fangraph data for players that changed teams and had reasonable sample sizes with the cards and other teams.

Pitcher	% changeups with cards	% with other teams
Kyle Lohse	8.6	18.1, 14.4, 11.9
Looper	8.2, 8.8, 6.8	7.2
Wellemeyer	9.2	15.6, 28.7
Pineiro	13.2	11.5, 12.2, 14.0
Villone	6.6ss	11.6, 12.7, 13.5
Franklin	3.4, 6.7	8.5, 11.8
Kip Wells	10.6	8.2ss, 13.2, 12.6
Marquis	9.9, 5.6	6.0, 10.8

No pitchers appear to be throwing more changeups with the cards than their other teams. Where multiple numbers are listed is one entry per year. I marked a few (ss) for small sample.

Looper, Pineiro, Wells, and Marquis all threw about the same percentage with the cards as their other teams. However, Lohse, Wellemeyer, Villone, and Franklin all appear to be throwing fewer changeups as a cardinal.

I don't have an explination for this. Only theory I have is the changeup isn't a groundball pitch which is a focus of our team. It hower is a pitch to contact pitch.

The one concern I would have is the changeup is the pitch that puts the least stress on the arm. By throwing more other higher stress pitchers this increases the chance of fatigue and injury.

2008 zips are up

DriverZn — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 09:11:45 -0000

2008 zips are up. Its ugly. The rotation doesn't look pretty and the offense is worse.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/oracle/discussion/2008_zips_projections_st_louis_cardinals /

They are, lets just say, depressing.

First lets look at how our 2007 rotation projected.
2007 zips (stats predictions) vs reality.

real / zips
Wainwright: 3.69 / 3.89 (Thats pretty darn close)
Reyes: 6.04 / 3.86 (Whoops, Won't get into reasons here)
Looper: 4.90 / 4.72 (Very close)
Thompson: 4.73 / 4.47 (Also close)
Wells: 5.81 / 4.98 (He was predicted to suck, but he out sucked the prediction)

Zips basically got 4 or 5 right. Reyes failed, we can debate why though thats not the point.

Our best projected 08 rotation is:
Wainwright 4.13
Wellemeyer 4.44 (may revise up in starting only role)
Reyes 4.65 (probably requires Duncan/TLR to be gone)
Garcia 4.65 (if healthy)
Looper 4.84
Thompson 5.15
Pinero 5.28

yuck.

The computer likes Reyes again and also likes Wellemeyer. Thompson and Pinero project to be ugly.

Whats your trackrecord on deals?

DriverZn — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:02:29 -0000

We all have opinions when the teams makes big decisions. How did we do after the fact? Be honest

With all the debate of late about what we will do in the offseason and what we should have done. How have your opinions on previous deals turned out. Over the last few years here is how I looked at the big deals.

Haren for Mulder:
I hated this one at the time. Mulder had too many warning signs and Haren had a lot of positive indicators. Clearly we lost on this deal.

Adam Kennedy signing:
While I wasn't excited about this I did think it was a good deal. Looks like I was wrong as he went on to put up some of the worst offensive numbers in recent history before getting hurt. If by some miracle he turns it around next year, this can be saved.

Converting Looper to a Starter:
I didn't expect this to work out but I didn't think the results would be a disaster. Overall he has out performed my expectations which was he would pitch ok for half a season then break down. I was wrong on this one, but not drastically so. He did break down, but not badly.

Opening day rotation:
My vote was Carp, Wells, Wainwright, Reyes, Thompson. My "in case of emergency" starter was Franklin

Picking up Weaver:
I was against this last season, again because it took time away from younger players. It did work out well for the team. Statistically we got really lucky.

Signing Wells.
For the $$$ I figured it was worth the risk. I don't usually object to 1yr deals if there is potential upside. We didn't get the upside but won't be sunk under a big contract either.

Letting Marquis walk:
I was all for it but I saw a good chance it would bite us in the but. It did but I don't see how he would have pitched like this for us.

Letting Suppan walk:
All for it.

My offseason FA Pitchers:
I wanted Lilly based on the number he managed while working in the AL East.

Looking at the pitching stats.

DriverZn — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 06:57:38 -0000

Which pitching stats really reflect how well a pitcher does?

In the game thread yesterday we had a good debate about what pitching to contact and strikeouts really do for pitchers. So I took all the 2006 data for pitchers that threw more than 150 IP and plotted it.

First up, does getting ground balls allow a pitcher to keep their pitch count down. What about the runs they give up.

Now there is a real trend where getting an increasing percentage of ground balls does indeed reduces the number of pitches a pitcher needs to throw. However, while the pitch count goes down, the pitchers that get lots of ground balls appear to give up just as many runs as the ones that don't. Interestingly the two extremes outperformed the generic pitchers. If a pitcher could magically increase their GB ratio I see no reason not to do it all else being equal.

What about strikeouts?

Looking at this data there does appear to be a weak relation to strikeouts requiring extra pitches. The difference is probably around 4-5 pitches per game. There is also a strong relation between getting strikeouts and keeping runs off the board. More strikeouts means fewer runs given up. Would you rather have 6 good innings or 7 average ones?

What about walks?

Now here we see a strong relationship between giving up walks and having to throw extra pitches. I doubt that will surprise anyone. The relationship between walks and runs is much weaker than I would have expected.

Now the stats guys have always claimed that K/BB is the best indicator of future success. Why?

Wow, Basically almost no pitchers with poor so/bb ratios are getting buy without throwing quite a few pitches. For the most part as the strikeout to walk ratio goes up, the pitchers needed and runs give up drop rapidly. The other telling part is very few pitchers with good K/bb rates are giving up lots of runs.

What does this tell us about the pitch to contact theory? The theory as I understand it is this. Getting more ground balls allows a pitcher to throw fewer pitches, walk fewer people and strikeout fewer people. Lets looks at that.

Getting more ground balls. By itself this would appear to be good. Nothing in the data shows a downside to this.

Walk fewer people. Very good. This is just as effective as increasing the GB% at reducing pitch counts.

Strikeout fewer people. Bad. Yes it might save a couple pitches per game but this is also expected to increase runs allowed.

Now the real question is, Does increasing GB% actually impact the other stats?

I really don't see much relationship here. With the exception of the 4 outliers walk rate appears to be unrelated to GB%. There does appear to be a slight downward trend in strikeout rate. So if increasing the GB% doesn't decrease the walk rate but does decrease the K rate slightly it doesn't appear to have a net positive effect on keeping runs off the board.

What I do take from all this. The best think a pitcher can do to go longer in a game and at the same time give up fewer runs is to simply walk fewer people. Perhaps that should be the message for the pitchers that do have strikeout stuff but not groundball stuff. Keep the walks down and they can do just fine.

Living good high in the strike zone

DriverZn — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 20:07:37 -0000

High stikes may be just the ticked for some pitchers.

A lot of people think you need extreme velocity to get away with high pitches. However, a few years back there was a pitchers that used to just pour a mid to upper 80s fastball into the zone and get hitters to swing and miss or hit routine fly outs.

You will find this pitcher on the all time lowest hits allowed per 9ip list at number 4.

Here are the top 5
#1 Nolan Ryan, 6.555
#2 Sandy Koufax 6.792
#3 Pedro Martinez 6.848
#4 Sid Fernandez 6.851
#5 J.R. Richard

All of the above are extreme strikeout pitchers but only one didn't throw in the mid to high 90s. How is that possible? Fernandez had a very unusual delivery. He hid the ball well and threw after a long stride from a low release point. He almost threw uphill. His ball also had good late movement high in the zone. Hitters were literally swinging though mid 80s fastballs all day long.

The other very unusual thing is how he got people that did get the bat on the ball out. Sid may have the lowest GB/FB ratio ever for a pitcher that logged a substantial number of innings. Lets take 1992 as an example since its closest to the modern live ball era.

~30% of the batter that went to the plate struck out.
~22% hit fly balls
~8% hit popups
~12% hit line drives
~17% hit the ball on the ground.

You might think that would result in giving up a lot of HR but it didn't, just 12 in 214 innings and finished the year with an ERA+ of 134.

The most sure way to get a batter out is with a strikeout. If the batter puts it in play, popouts are the best, followed by fly balls, ground balls, then line drivers as the worst.

For his carer 1866ip the GB/FB rates is around 0.5 to 0.6, I cannot find an exact value. His carer ERA+ was 110.

Who says you cannot live high in the zone?