Success in Scoring, Part 2: Pitchers stopping hitters
This story references another piece I did yesterday that looked at the likelihood of a player or team scoring once a man reached. It can be found HERE. You may recall, or you may not there weren't many comments so if you like this go back and read that, that Bossman Junior was #2 in the AL East in a stat I'm calling Success Rate. Without getting into the math again, basically he scores 54% of the time that he reaches base. For comparison, the AL Average for all players is 38% and the Major League Average is 37%. So thats very good for Beej and a few others of the guys that were above. You can find all Major League Players at the following downloadable file: Success Rates for Hitting vs. Pitching
Time to roll with the new. In this installment I wanted to look at the other side of the coin. What Pitchers/Teams are good at not allowing a man to score after he has reached. Here is the same analysis as before, only this time, we will look at pitching vs. hitting. The AL East:
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In this case a lower percentage is a good thing. As you can see the Rays come in third in the division, slightly below average, but nowhere near the disaster zone that is the Yanks and O's. Think about that for a second, for every runner that gets on base against NY and BAL, there is a 41% and 42% chance that that runner will come home, respectively. Lets see what else we can glean from this.
Now, the AL East is a very good division, so it is somewhat surprising that only two teams (notice their place in the standings) would come in as better than average at such an integral part of the game. How does this translate league-wide.
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As you can see the Rays come in at 19th. At first glance this passes the smell test as you see good pitching teams at the top and bad pitching teams at the bottom. Good pitchers a) don't allow a lot of baserunners (especially extra base hits) and b) can bear down once they have runners on. Another thing that may stand out is all the NL Teams at the top. Clearly, having pitchers hit will, help you in denying baserunners.
First, the Rays staff:
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Shields and Niemann, are our only starters that are below ML average. The familiar names in the bullpen show up in the right places (JP/Lance/Shouse good, Wheeler not good). FWIW, Percy didn't qualify due to PAa, but I just ran the numbers and he is at 35.3%. The best starters in MLB:
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Quite a few real good wheelers and dealers in there. There is a ton more stuff in here that I would like to show, but I feel this is going on too long as it is. Feel free to download the workbook: Success Rate: Pitchers vs. Batters
It is in similar format as the previous article with tabs for different sheets. Do your own sorts if you want or build upon this. I don't plan on updating until probably the All Star Break to see who could sustain this (if it is sustainable) and who fell off the cliff.
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Comments
Good stuff as usual man
Cant believe Neimann has been the best in our rotation at this. I would like to think Shields would come down a bit. Speaking of Shields, the other night when Aki bobbled that third out that ended up resulting in three runs, would that count against a pitcher?
This is Runs not Earned Runs
I didn’t have any specific reason for picking one over the other. There’s probably a lot of flaws, but for a quick benchmark it seemed to spit out appropriate answers. And thank you for the compliment.
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.
-Al Lopez
by Sandy Kazmir on May 18, 2009 4:03 PM EDT up reply actions
Ok cool
just wondering. In a full season of work I doubt it would really alter the number that drastically, just wondering.
by BJ the Bossman on May 18, 2009 4:06 PM EDT up reply actions
Very interesting
I’m going to look at how basestealing and HRs play into this. I think it is more telling defensively as once a runner is on base, part of the success rate is entirely based on the players behind them.
Leadoff hitters have an advantage since they come up to bat with 0 outs at least once a game
That gives them the highest probability of scoring, especially with the meat of the order behind
But the list of Major League leaders wasn't all lead-off guys
That is what I found surprising it was a lot of fast guys, but it makes sense that a guy that hits a lot of doubles is going to come in, especially with good hitters behind.
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.
-Al Lopez
by Sandy Kazmir on May 18, 2009 4:22 PM EDT up reply actions
I meant that it wasn't all fast guys.
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.
-Al Lopez
by Sandy Kazmir on May 18, 2009 4:23 PM EDT up reply actions
I guess thats an IF
but I think it will at least be close by the end of the year
by BJ the Bossman on May 18, 2009 4:25 PM EDT up reply actions
For him to end up at .400 he would basically have to OBP at .435 for the rest of the season
assuming 600 PA. I’m not sure if he can do that.
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.
-Al Lopez
by Sandy Kazmir on May 18, 2009 4:34 PM EDT up reply actions
Yea I agree
But remembering how bad Pena was in the first half and the fact he came relatively close to .400 gives me hope. And if anybody can give Pena a run for money in walks its BJ. So im gonna keep hopin but yea youre prob right that it wont be over .380 at best
by BJ the Bossman on May 18, 2009 5:04 PM EDT up reply actions
Team numbers seem to tie very closely to HR's allowed...
8 of the top 10 teams are also in the top 10 for least HR’s allowed… The AL east order is exactly the same as the order for HRs allowed.
I’d bet there is a very strong correlation between the two.
Good eye
That makes sense intuitively as well, since 100% of HR’s score at least one run. What about stolen bases allowed?
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.
-Al Lopez
by Sandy Kazmir on May 18, 2009 4:37 PM EDT up reply actions
I didn't check that...
But it won’t matter nearly as much as HR or slugging in general…
There is an awful lot that needs to be pulled out of the numbers to gain a true understanding of why these runners are scoring at a higher rate. There may be something there, I just think its buried under tons of variables that are clouding the fact.
Dan Wheeler is a good example. He’s the worst on the team in % scoring but that’s deceiving…
- He’s allowed runs in 3 of 16 appearances, all runs scored in innings with HRs
- He’s inherited 9 runners, only one scored
With such a small sample, those 9 runners (who should they be attributed?) would greatly change his number.
Yeah I set this up, initially, only to look at the hitters.
Once I found a nice cache of data I figured I would look at the pitching side. One thing I ran into was the relievers. There numbers have a higher variation, which makes sense with lower PA’s. I don’t intend to use this as an end all be all, but I like to present things that I find that seem like new angles and then we can talk about what makes sense what doesn’t and hopefully get closer to the truth. I imagine FreeZo is carrying us in that direction.
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it.
-Al Lopez
by Sandy Kazmir on May 18, 2009 6:16 PM EDT up reply actions
Perhaps most interesting are the internal variances
For example, Niemann’s high OBP but low score rate. GB pitchers can perhaps get by with a higher OBP – Niemann isn’t that. Seems he’s been lucky.
Perhaps looking at GB rate impact and/or K rate on the pitchers side could tell something. There’s probably enough overall data to spot a trend. Individual numbers still suffer from smaller samples.
by nyyfaninlaaland on May 19, 2009 1:23 PM EDT reply actions

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