Was Hellickson "Not Getting the Calls?"
by mr. maniac on Oct 25, 2011 5:35 PM EDT
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A few days ago, Baseball America released their MLB Rookie of the Year for 2011. Our very own Jeremy Hellickson was the proud recipient of this prestigious award. That isn't all Hellickson has going for him. During his 2011 rookie campaign, Hellickson ranked highly in several well known categories such as....
ERA: 8th in the AL.
Wins: 17th in the AL (tied).
Quality Starts: 14th in the AL (tied).
Opponents BA: 2nd in the AL.
These stats are obviously very impressive for a rookie pitcher, let alone one in the AL East. The following points are not meant to take anything away from the accomplishments Hellickson had in the early stages of his MLB career.
One of the things that really stands out about Hellickson is his FIP. In 2011, Hellickson had a 4.44 FIP, which was around a run and a half higher than his ERA. The cause for this was his low K rate and relatively (by Hellickson‘s standards) high BB/9, which harmed his overall K/BB ratio. Over his career in the minors, Hellickson never posted, in a full season, a K/BB ratio of lower than 3.12 (the higher the number, the better). In 2011, that number plummeted to 1.63.
Several theories have been thrown out there about why Hellickson's ratio took a dip, including these popular ones:
a) Hellickson struggled with his command.
b) Hellickson's strikeouts were lower than they should have been.
c) Hellickson was getting squeezed by the umpires.
Point A is merely an observation that, at our time, can't really be confirmed in this case. Point B has already been looked over by Bradley Woodrum (here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/jeremy-hellickson-strikeouts-cometh/) As far as I have heard/seen though, point C has yet to be undertaken by anyone in the Rays blog-o-sphere. So, in this post, I will attempt to see if there is any truth to point C.
In order to determine if Hellickson was being squeezed by the umps or not, I must compare his calls to those on the rest of the Rays staff (for simplicity).The first step in this process is to remove all the pitches that were swung at, leaving only those pitches which the umpire made a call on. In doing this, I will see how many times Hellickson "got the call" compared to how many times he didn't.
All of the information comes from brooksbaseball.net. Any pitch that touched the strike zone, as given by the site, is considered a strike.
Jeremy Hellickson
Number of pitches taken by opposing hitters (roughly): 1595
Number of balls that were called strikes: 61
Number of strikes that were called balls: 121
Umpire's differential (Number of balls that were called strikes minus the number of strikes that were called balls): -60
Umpire's differential per pitch: -.0376
James Shields
Number of pitches taken by opposing hitters (roughly):1895
Number of balls that were called strikes: 67
Number of strikes that were called balls: 168
Umpire's differential: -101
Umpire's differential per pitch: -.0533
David Price
Number of pitches taken by opposing hitters (roughly): 2070
Number of balls that were called strikes: 96
Number of strikes that were called balls: 195
Umpire's differential: -99
Umpire's differential per pitch: -.0478
Wade Davis
Number of pitches taken by opposing hitters (roughly): 1535
Number of balls that were called strikes: 99
Number of strikes that were called balls: 120
Umpire's differential: -21
Umpire's differential per pitch: -.0137
Jeff Niemann
Number of pitches taken by opposing hitters (roughly): 1183
Number of balls that were called strikes: 31
Number of strikes that were called balls: 85
Umpire's differential: -54
Umpire's differential per pitch: -.0456
The results are quite interesting. It appears that Shields, Price, AND Niemann were al squeezed more than Hellickson. On the other hand, it does appear Hellickson is getting squeezed. I am unsure of the numbers across baseball, but I wouldn't be surprised if umpires across MLB now tend to call tighter zones. That project is obviously too large to take on, but I am fairly certain it holds weight.
So, in conclusion, I think it is fair to say Hellickson was being squeezed, but that he was not getting squeezed in particular compared to other starting pitchers.
This post was written by a member of the DRaysBay community and does not necessarily express the views or opinions of DRaysBay staff.
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Well worth it, this is really awesome to see fully fleshed out
My thoughts on A are that he knows he can’t miss in the zone so he’s more apt to miss off the plate. I guess this could lead to the term nibbley, but I hope it’s something he finds more confidence in next year. Hopefully refining the curve allows him to not have to be so fine with his fastball.
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
by Sandy Kazmir on Oct 25, 2011 5:58 PM EDT up reply actions
For the record, both hellickson and Shields were not getting a lot of the calls down in the zone.
Davis got a lot of calls on the sides of the plate, but not up. Price’s was funky and Niemann just didn’t get calls.
I wonder if there are any pitchers in MLB that had a positive differential, a significant one anyways.
I could care less about your graduate degree-I was a full professor at Harvard at 34 and am a full professor at Columbia now in a theoretical field whose main tool is statistical mechanics. So can can come down from your high place.
by Buzzy on Sep 24, 2011 4:39 PM EDT up reply actions
not putting it up to you, appreciate the work you already did
just pondering
I could care less about your graduate degree-I was a full professor at Harvard at 34 and am a full professor at Columbia now in a theoretical field whose main tool is statistical mechanics. So can can come down from your high place.
by Buzzy on Sep 24, 2011 4:39 PM EDT up reply actions
Were you able to use countif statements or did you manually go in and sort these to spec?
I only ask because I’d love to expand this a bit. Maybe looking solely at ALE and then going from there if it doesn’t prove too strenuous. Truly great to see something that I haven’t seen before
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
by Sandy Kazmir on Oct 25, 2011 9:07 PM EDT up reply actions
Manually.
It was pretty strenuous. I was able to figure out the total amount of balls taken, but all the other stuff was manual. Got a piece of paper, a pen, and a caluculator and went to work.
One way I've found that is a bit less tedious, though not easy is to sort all balls by px and then collect those that are inside one side of the box, let's say >=-1
I then take all those that were to the right of the left bound and copy to a new sheet, then I sort by the righthand bound, let’s say <=1. We can then scoop those off and paste to a new sheet. Now we sort by those that are above the lower limit, i.e. >=1.8. We paste whatever is left into another sheet then one more time sort to find those that are <=3.56. Now the only pitches that are left should be called balls that are within the strikezone.
It really sounds much worse than it is once you get the hang of it, but I’m playing around with countif and sumproduct statements and not really getting anywhere. It would be nice to create a statement that automatically counts the number of balls that are within our defined strikezone and also count the number of strikes that our outside the called strikezone. This would allow us to look at many pitchers once the string has been created. Unfortunately, I’m running into a brick wall.
I’m going to try my way to check and see if I get something close to what you got and then go from there as it’s not nearly as complicated as the way it sounds like you did. My only thing is that I’m using different strikezones for lefty and righty batters so it does get a little more convoluted. I hope to have something by tomorrow afternoon, but I’ll be sure to share whenever and in the meantime if there is an easy way to do what I described in paragraph 2 please speak up.
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
by Sandy Kazmir on Oct 25, 2011 10:00 PM EDT up reply actions
Oh and peep this
joelefkowitz.com this is my preferred Pitch F/x site. I never realized that you can refine your search by balls called strikes and vice-versa. In the pitcher box, select your guy, then in the “plate discipline” box select “strike-called a ball”. It pulls all that data for you into an excel sheet. This should be a LOT faster though I don’t think it will be quite as precise. It even makes a nice little graph:
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
by Sandy Kazmir on Oct 25, 2011 10:04 PM EDT up reply actions
That's Hellickson and here's Shields
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
by Sandy Kazmir on Oct 25, 2011 10:05 PM EDT up reply actions
Niemann
I tried to look at Beej, but it was just broken images, perhaps it only works with pitchers
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
by Sandy Kazmir on Oct 25, 2011 10:08 PM EDT up reply actions
look at that two seamer over the heart of the plate, poor guy.
I could care less about your graduate degree-I was a full professor at Harvard at 34 and am a full professor at Columbia now in a theoretical field whose main tool is statistical mechanics. So can can come down from your high place.
by Buzzy on Sep 24, 2011 4:39 PM EDT up reply actions
OK, so here's what I get letting Joe L automate the calls that were wrong, I have no idea what parameters this uses,
but it’s quick and dirty and will be really easy to compare other teams, note that takes was a separate search of all takes (balls, called strikes). These numbers are quite a bit different than yours. I’d suspect that yours have a higher degree of precision, but if we’re talking relativity between pitchers then this seems to mesh at first glance (namely Wade Davis actually getting more calls than giving up and quite low in your look). I’m going to look into the rest of the ALE if not more tomorrow for comparison and hope to be able to share excellent findings:
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
At the top, looks like relievers with iffy control to begin with not being given an easy time if they're dancing around the edges.
And Moore who is a rook.
The other starters are a bit more consistently below halfway on the +/-, but still annoying to see those numbers in the green. Good work.
I could care less about your graduate degree-I was a full professor at Harvard at 34 and am a full professor at Columbia now in a theoretical field whose main tool is statistical mechanics. So can can come down from your high place.
by Buzzy on Sep 24, 2011 4:39 PM EDT up reply actions
Awesome! Thanks for doing this!
Now MY next question is how many of the strikes called balls came in a 2 strike count?
Am I the only one flagging this guy?
Seriously, do we have to wait for the money shot or a "F*** THE SOXXXXXX!" before we ban him? Doubleteapot… BAN HIM!!
by AlohaSox on Sep 28, 2011 10:20 PM CDT
Yeah, that is ugly
Especially when it’s down and in the middle of the plate. wtf.
Am I the only one flagging this guy?
Seriously, do we have to wait for the money shot or a "F*** THE SOXXXXXX!" before we ban him? Doubleteapot… BAN HIM!!
by AlohaSox on Sep 28, 2011 10:20 PM CDT
by SandalsNoPants on Oct 26, 2011 7:26 PM EDT up reply actions
lmao, that fuckin slider.
I could care less about your graduate degree-I was a full professor at Harvard at 34 and am a full professor at Columbia now in a theoretical field whose main tool is statistical mechanics. So can can come down from your high place.
by Buzzy on Sep 24, 2011 4:39 PM EDT up reply actions
I can break out by that later after I'm done collecting the data, I have all of the AL and traded players, just need to hammer the NL
Only issue is I just had a work project dropped in my lap. I might not be able to finish data collection before 5 today. One really awesome thing that we can do with this is look at individual umpires. For instance, we can see that John Hirschbeck got around 18.3% of his takes wrong while favoring pitchers by 2.3%. The best umpire so far is Mike Estabrook at 11.8% wrong calls, favoring batters by 1.0%. Overall, we can see that umpires miss around 15% of calls as a group and favor batters by 1.8%. This is really fascinating stuff to me so I can’t wait to have all the data compiled. The analysis is really quite easy from there.
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
by Sandy Kazmir on Oct 26, 2011 10:08 AM EDT up reply actions
+1
This is good stuff.
Am I the only one flagging this guy?
Seriously, do we have to wait for the money shot or a "F*** THE SOXXXXXX!" before we ban him? Doubleteapot… BAN HIM!!
by AlohaSox on Sep 28, 2011 10:20 PM CDT
by SandalsNoPants on Oct 26, 2011 7:25 PM EDT up reply actions
Oh and don't feel bad, a little gruntwork never hurt anybody and you were the one that had a phenomenal idea that we can really run with here.
and there goes our season
OTM's biggest Clutch Carl fan.
by gizmosandy on Sep 11, 2011 3:59 PM EDT reply actions
by Sandy Kazmir on Oct 26, 2011 10:12 AM EDT up reply actions
Whelk did a quick look at this in May
http://www.draysbay.com/2011/5/3/2150064/is-hellickson-getting-squeezed
Really appreciate the full-season look!
Vroom vroom party starter
www.raysprospects.com
I'm not sure of the point in comparing him to last year.
Would it be to suggest that last year was a fluke?
Well when he did that all he had to compare to was 2010 data
But yes, it’s looking like 2010 he did get more calls.
Vroom vroom party starter
www.raysprospects.com
by Imperialism32 on Oct 26, 2011 11:45 AM EDT up reply actions
Good looks both from Mr. Maniac and SK.
The problem in my head is that we need to be comparing it to a normal strikezone, not a rulebook one, which differs quite a bit. Moreover, it varies per batter’s height, and probably other batter attributes. I know Mike Fast says that you can just adjust it by batter’s height and get 90+% of the calls right, but it seems like we can do better.
I’m trying right now to figure out how to compare on a large scale any single pitch to the group of all pitches in a similar location that a batter has seen, but it’s being tough. I’ll be sure to check back on this when/if I’m able to get something working.
I thought others have said on here that the normalized strikezone is crap?
I could care less about your graduate degree-I was a full professor at Harvard at 34 and am a full professor at Columbia now in a theoretical field whose main tool is statistical mechanics. So can can come down from your high place.
by Buzzy on Sep 24, 2011 4:39 PM EDT up reply actions
Right, but it's not because the idea is bad.
Rather, Brooks doesn’t quite do it right. It uses a rulebook strikezone more or less, and doesn’t take into account the weirdness of human umps. During the playoffs, Brooks started offering “fastmaps,” which knowledge the difference. Take a look: http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/zoneTrack.php?month=10&day=3&year=2011&game=gid_2011_10_03_texmlb_tbamlb_1%2F&prevDate=103
Also, my memory of what Fast says was slightly off. To predict the strikezone, what you need is a combination between batter height and average pitch height of the pitcher: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=14098
Low in the zone
I’d be interested in seeing the information by umpire as well. The % of bad calls low in the zone looks to be equal to that of all others combined, that’s a significant problem, because that’s the best place throw your strikes.
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