We all know Trevor Hoffman has been having some problems this season, and much of the discussion has focused on the fact that he's not throwing as many change-ups as he usually does.  A quick glance at the data bears this out; from 2007 to the present (the pitch-f/x era), Hoffman has thrown his changeup 31% of the time, but he's only thrown it 19.4% of the time this season.  Clearly this is a discrepancy, but Hoffman's postgame quote suggests there may be more to this:

"I’m pigeon-holing myself into situations where the hitter can be a little more patient. He doesn’t have to offer at (the changeup). I’m pitching behind in the count. You do that in the big leagues, the numbers will indicate that. It’s more of an ‘out’ pitch than a ‘getting back in the count’ pitch. That’s the dynamic of that pitch."

In other words, Hoffman seems to be saying that he's throwing the changeup less often because he's not finding himself in changeup counts as often as he usually has in his career.  As luck would have it, just today  Fangraphs introduced pitch-type splits based on the count.  The data are intriguing, to say the least:

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I did a post about this last night, and having received a useful tip on how to better study this (thanks metric!), I'm coming back to it and actually presenting some results. The basic idea here is that I was talking with my dad about hitting .400, and I was working with the assumption that a player is more likely to do it if he can consistently outhit his BABIP.  That got me thinking about what sorts of players can outhit their BABIP.

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My dad and I were talking about the possibility of someone hitting .400, and as I was looking around Fangraphs to pull some relevant numbers, I noticed that Albert Pujols has outhit his BABIP in every season of his career, except his first.  I imagine everyone here doesn't need me to explain it, but that is definitely unusual, as strikeouts tend to depress BA more below BABIP than home runs raise them. 

Anyway, the reason I'm posting is that I was wondering how many other players have managed that; I tried a few names, but the only ones I came up with were Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, and Babe Ruth.  Does anyone have a database they can query to come up with more?  Or am I being dumb and has someone already studied this sort of thing?

So, I've been keeping a log of what uniforms the Brewers wear for the website Uni Watch (you can check the log out here if you're interested), and I was going through it.  One of the great things about it is, uniform details aside, I've kept track of what pitcher started each day, and whether the Crew won or lost.  So, with this information at my fingertips, I thought I might check out how many games the team has won with each pitcher.  I've either watched or followed pretty closely every game so far this season, and I figured they'd have done best in games started by Yo, then games started by Bush, Looper, Parra, and Suppan, roughly in that order.

Much to my surprise, I found out that the Brewers actually have the exact same record of 6-3 in each of Gallardo's, Bush's, and Looper's starts.  Suppan is basically neck and neck with them, at 6-4.  And Parra has, apparently, been the whipping boy, as the team has gone 3-7 in his starts. 

Anyway, I just found that interesting: first of all, that the team has strangely won the exact same number of starts for four of its five starters; and second of all, that while I always feel a huge burst of confidence on a Yovani day, the team has really been the same on every day that Manny doesn't start.  I definitely would not have guessed that's the case.