Infield Popped: Why Matt Garza's Infield Fly Rate is Down

by R.J. Anderson on Aug 18, 2009 7:00 AM EDT

Jim Hickey is a genius.

Andrew Friedman delivered him Matt Garza, a limitless arm with cooperation concerns, and Hickey turned him into a heater-throwing, infield-pop-inducing mad man. Garza nearly led the league in infield flies last year. As we all know, infield flies turn into outs more than any other batted ball type. Add in the lacking threat of a home run that normal fly balls bring and man, Garza's new skill was his best. 9 for every 50 fly balls became automatic outs. Talk about a beautiful habit.

Something went wrong this year. The ratio is down to 8 infielders per 100 fly balls. Clearly Hickey lost his ability to motivate Garza, or he decided automatic outs were no fun. Or, creating infield flies is simply an unrepeatable skill for most starting pitchers.

To test this radical theory I took every pitcher with 100+ innings over last and this year then ran the year-to-year correlation on infield fly balls. Here's the scatter plot to prove it:

Iffbr2_medium

The R^2 is 0.067 and the p-value is 0.95. There's no relationship between year-to-year results. Which means this one isn't on Garza or Hickey. Generating infield fly balls simply aren't a repeatable skill. It's not like Garza can say "I'm going to throw this 95 mile per hour fastball and hope it gets hit in the air, but I want it to go further up than out." Well, he can say it, but it's like me saying I'm going to hit a 94 mile per hour fastball 500 feet the other way. Neither will brag about calling their shot afterwards though.

(Worth noting: the mean was nearly identical in both years; x: 9.77% x+1: 9.74%)

(Also worth noting: 77 samples were used.)

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Comments

it does seem like Garza's arm is made of rubber.

by walkoffwalk on Aug 18, 2009 8:34 AM EDT reply actions

If I am understanding correctly, you are saying pitchers have no control over their IFFB%

While this may be true if you look at all pitchers. I’m not sure we can say certain pitchers aren’t able to induce a higher %. What is an infield fly ball? Its a poorly hit fly ball. The mean is just shy of 10, but how does that explain the following pitchers?

Johan Santana – 2007 was his lwoest at 9.6%. All other seasons since 2002 have been 12.8% or higher

Carlos Zambrano’s past 4 years: 12.4%, 12.8%, 12.4%, 16.3%

Jered Weaver’s past 4: 14.0%, 11.5%, 14.2%, 15.0%

Edwin Jackson – 7 consecutive years in double figures

All these pitchers have career averages north of 12%. Maybe there is a set of characteristics that can induce more IFFB or mis hit fly balls.

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by FreeZorilla on Aug 18, 2009 9:21 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs

Other names include:

Bronson Arroyo 13.8% for career
Moyer 13.4% for career
Wakefield 15.1% for career
Randy Wolf 13.9% for career

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by FreeZorilla on Aug 18, 2009 9:26 AM EDT up reply actions

The knuckler

www.draysbay.com

by Tommy Rancel on Aug 18, 2009 9:44 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions

Just a glance, seems like everyone is a fly ball pitcher.

I’ll run IFFB% with FB% and see if that tells us anything.

by R.J. Anderson on Aug 18, 2009 10:26 AM EDT up reply actions

Wanted to run CV% and CH% but Excel crashed.

Ugh.

by R.J. Anderson on Aug 18, 2009 11:04 AM EDT up reply actions

Fastballs with rise?

So long, Sweet Lime!

by PlayOnWords on Aug 18, 2009 9:31 AM EDT up reply actions

I said it wasn't a repeatable skill for MOST.

by R.J. Anderson on Aug 18, 2009 10:17 AM EDT up reply actions

"Generating infield fly balls simply aren't a repeatable skill."

Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."

by Brickhaus on Aug 18, 2009 11:02 AM EDT up reply actions

I didn't notice the "most" up ton either when I wrote the post below

See it now, obviously.

Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."

by Brickhaus on Aug 18, 2009 11:03 AM EDT up reply actions

up top

Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."

by Brickhaus on Aug 18, 2009 11:03 AM EDT up reply actions

Read better.

Or, creating infield flies is simply an unrepeatable skill for most starting pitchers.

by R.J. Anderson on Aug 18, 2009 11:03 AM EDT up reply actions

Write better.

Look two paragraphs down. I was quoting you. You said “most” in one spot, but you said it in absolute terms in another.

Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."

by Brickhaus on Aug 18, 2009 11:04 AM EDT up reply actions

In your actual conclusion, you didn't say most

You said most in the thesis.

Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."

by Brickhaus on Aug 18, 2009 11:05 AM EDT up reply actions

Eh

I don’t think that shows that infield fly rate isn’t a repeatable skill. Maybe not for most (i.e., more often than not, a high infield fly rate is flukey), but I’m pretty sure there are some players who can generate above-average infield flies on a consistent basis, and as long as those guys are indeed out there, then it could be a repeatable skill. It doesn’t make sense to me though that GB rate or FB rate is repeatable but that getting a more extreme angle one way or the other isn’t.

Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."

by Brickhaus on Aug 18, 2009 11:02 AM EDT reply actions

I think it would just come down to pitchers with good command who are able to fool hitters more consistently

Certain hitters are certainly more prone to pop-ups. Its a matter of deceiving those particular hitters. How to quantify that is the difficult question.

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by FreeZorilla on Aug 18, 2009 11:17 AM EDT reply actions