Batten down the hatches – I’m writing about another Royals trade. Hopefully, this thread goes better than the last one…

According to Sports Radio 810 in Kansas City, the Royals have acquired Coco Crisp from the Red Sox for reliever Ramon Ramirez. Let’s break down both players, win value style.

Crisp has a pretty well established set of skills – He’ll post a BB% around 8%, a K% around 16%, and an ISO around .120. This is the classic groundball/gap power hitter, and not surprisingly, his results are consistent with what we expect from that skillset. He turns 29 in a few weeks, so he’s in his prime, and we shouldn’t expect much of a change going forward.

The Marcel projections has him projected .269/.333/.392 for 2009, good for a .321 wOBA, compared to a league average of .332. This pegs him as a below average hitter, but not a terrible one, worth about ten runs less than an average hitter over a full season. Of course, the Royals aren’t acquiring Crisp for his bat, but for his glove.

The +/- system has Crisp all over the board the last three years: -7 in 2006, +26 in 2007, and -2 in 2008 as a CF. He’s almost certainly not the best defensive center fielder in baseball, but we can’t ignore the fact that he was universally praised as a terrific defensive CF in 2007 and the numbers backed it up. If we just average the three years, we get +5 per year, which makes Crisp an above average CF. I can buy that.

Center fielders also hit worse than league average as a group, so we have to add a positional adjustment of 2.5 runs.

-10 offense, +5 defense, +2.5 position adjustment, +20 replacement level = +17.5 runs, or about 1.75 wins. We probably need to dock Crisp a few runs because of his weak arm (+/- just covers range), so let’s call it +1.5 wins instead. That’s Crisp’s 2009 value, making him a slightly below average player, but still a decently valuable member of a roster.

The Royals didn’t get him for free, however – let’s look at Ramon Ramirez, who was one of the Royals best relief pitchers last year. He posted a 2.84 FIP in 70 innings by racking up a strikeout per inning and, more importantly, not giving up home runs. He only allowed two long balls the whole year. That’s very unlikely to continue going forward (even the best relievers can’t sustain a 3% HR/FB rate), and Marcel projects his HR rate to climb from 0.25 HR/9 to 0.71 HR/9, which is the main reason it projects his FIP at 3.76 going forward.

A 3.76 FIP is great for a starter, but just average for a reliever. You can get a 4.50 FIP from a replacement level reliever, and so over a projected 60 innings, you’re looking at a difference of 5 runs between Ramirez and a replacement level reliever. We have to multiply those five runs by 1.5 to account for the extra leverage of the situations he’ll likely be used in, but even still, that only makes him a +.75 win pitcher.

The Royals clearly got the better player here, turning a decent but not great reliever into an almost league average center fielder. The fact that Crisp is owed $5.75 million for 2009 while Ramirez won’t make much makes this trade less of an outright steal for Kansas City, but Crisp is still more of a value than Ramirez is.

That doesn’t make this a bad trade for Boston, necessarily – they didn’t have a full time job to offer Crisp, and so they turned a superfluous bench player into a solid enough cheap reliever. But this is more of a lateral move for the Red Sox and a pretty decent step up for the Royals.

I give the edge to Kansas City in this one.

Well, I cannot say I am surprised, or even that upset. No, not because Dustin Pedroia was worthy of being named MVP, he wasn’t. It’s because I just cannot muster up much surprise when the BBWAA returns votes in this manner. Pedroia played in a big market, he had teammates and media members talking him up, he found himself to qualities like hustle, clutch, undersized, and the like. Despite the overwhelming stumping going on in his favor, he came across as the underdog candidate.

He should have been the underdog candidate, because he wasn’t the best choice for MVP. You want to talk numbers? Pedroia was 10th in RC/27. He played in a park skewed in his favor. He was 16th in WPA/LI. You want to talk pure value? Pedroia ranks 9th in WPA among AL-only players, 10th if you toss in Mark Teixeira‘s combined figures. Here is the entirety of Dustin Pedroia’s case to be named the AL MVP: He was first in clutch. That’s it. Joe Mauer (superior to Pedroia in nearly, if not all, meaningful category, was second. Joe Mauer is a catcher, a position worth about an extra win’s worth of value over second base.

Let us repeat our exercise from yesterday. Sorting by WPA, here’s the top five players in the AL for 2008 with their finish in the MVP voting in parenthesis:
1.Cliff Lee (12th)
2.Joe Mauer (4th)
3.Carlos Pena (9th)
4.Justin Morneau (2nd)
5.Carlos Quentin (5th)

I can excuse Cliff Lee from not getting more recognition. I am of the belief that the Cy Young is the award for pitchers and thus they shouldn’t be in the discussion for MVP. And overall, it looks pretty solid. The screw-up is that the actual MVP winner isn’t among those five names.

Now here’s the top five vote getters for MVP in the NL with their WPA rank in parenthesis:
1.Dustin Pedroia (9th)
2.Justin Morneau (4th)
3.Kevin Youkilis (21st)
4.Joe Mauer (2nd)
5.Carlos Quentin (5th)

Clearly, these people were good beyond any quantifiable means, and were able to single-handedly will their teams to contention by the sheer force of their personality and courage and valor. That’s why they got these MVP votes. Defense? Value? WOBA? BRAA? Nah, those have nothing on grit and scrappiness.

For the umpteenth time, even though it will not deter people from claiming it, I am not saying that Dustin Pedroia is bad or that he didn’t have a great season. He isn’t and he did. I am saying he wasn’t the MVP by any reasonable (and even most unreasonable) criteria. Joe Mauer probably should have won and even though he wasn’t above his league to the extent that Albert Pujols was, that doesn’t put a damper on Pedroia being the wrong choice.

Reports recently circulated that Pedro Martinez definitely plans on pitching in 2009, if not longer than that. Having just turned 37 years old, he certainly would not be the oldest pitcher in the major leagues next season; however, based on his performance this season, the supremely dominant Pedro is long gone. With that in mind, what type of contract should he sign? Or, then again, what would be reasonable, given his track record as well as his most recent performance? I’m sure the Mets will make some type of offer to him, be it half-hearted or not, but if he wants to pitch next season, you better believe he will be able to find a home.

In 2006-07, since he made just five starts in ’07 alone, Pedro started 28 games, threw for 160.2 innings, and surrendered 141 hits, 19 of which were home runs. He walked 46 and fanned 169 hitters. This resulted in a 4.15 ERA and 3.67 FIP, still very solid. Last year, however, things took a turn for the worse. In 20 starts and 109 innings, his K/BB dipped below 2.0, and he posted a 5.61 ERA and 5.18 FIP. Given that we estimate replacement level to be a 5.50 FIP, Pedro was pretty darn close to being a replacement level pitcher last season.

The marcel projections for next season are now available here, and they are not too optimistic regarding Martinez. Marcel has Pedro pegged for 117 IP with a 4.85 ERA and 4.57 FIP. Based on his FIP, Pedro is projected to give up 60 runs in 117 innings pitched next season. How does that stack up with the replacement level? Well, unlike Dave’s recent posts on Sabathia and Burnett, both of whom are projected for 180+ IP, Pedro is slotted to log a significantly lesser amount of innings. Since he is only projected to pitch in 117 innings, we cannot use the 160 inning replacement benchmark. Instead, we will adjust the replacement level starter to amass Pedro’s projected innings total.

In other free agent value posts, the replacement starter and reliever came into play since manager’s will have a quicker hook with replacement level starters. In Pedro’s case, we are assuming he will miss starts entirely, not get a quick yank out of the game. Now, we compare Pedro’s 117 innings to that of the replacement level starter:

Pedro Martinez: 117 IP, 60 runs allowed
Replacement SP:117 IP, 72 runs allowed

Put together, Pedro is projected to be twelve runs better than the replacement level next season, or one win above replacement. If free agents are going for the rate of 5.5 million dollars per win, then Martinez should sign a deal worth 5.5 million. Add in his name value and his “veteran leadership” and we can bump that up to at least 6 mil, perhaps even 6.5 mil.

I would tend to think the 10% discount for a multi-year deal would not apply here, as it would be more appropriate for Pedro to sign something like a 1 yr-6 mm deal, laden with incentives. He may not be the dominant force he once was, but there will likely be plenty of teams willing to take flyers on him for next season, if not more than that.

Nothing against the Jeremy Affeldt signing from yesterday (that was a great deal for the Giants, by the way), but we have our first notable free agent signing of the winter. Well, it’s actually a re-signing, but it still gives us a pretty good insight into where the market for starting pitchers might be headed. Ryan Dempster re-signed with the Cubs for a guaranteed 3 years and $38 million and a player option for 2012 that could make the deal worth $52 million over four years, if he wants to exercise his option.

Really, though, the Cubs have put themselves on the line for 4/52 for Dempster, since they don’t control the option, so that’s what we’ll call the contract.

Dempster was certainly outstanding in 2008 – his 3.41 FIP ranked as the seventh best mark in the National League, sandwiched right between Ben Sheets and Johan Santana. That’s some pretty solid company for a guy who had been a rather pedestrian reliever the two years prior. He elevated his game by cutting a walk per game off his BB/9 and elevating his strikeout rate simultaneously, leading to a career best 2.46 K/BB rate. His improved command helped him control the strike zone in ways he never had.

However, the real key to his run prevention was keeping the ball in the yard. His 0.61 HR/9 rate was 8th best in the NL, putting him in a group with guys like Brandon Webb, Derek Lowe, and Aaron Cook. They limit homers by inducing a ton of groundballs, but Dempster is not an extreme ground ball pitcher. He leands towards the GB side of the spectrum, but not nearly to the same degree. He just got more than his fair share of flyball outs, which is represented by his 7.7% HR/FB rate. That kind of performance isn’t sustainable over a long period of time and should be expected to climb in future years.

If we bump his HR/FB rate up to 10% (which is basically league average) for 2008, he’d have given up 18 home runs, four more than he actually gave up. Each home run has a run vlaue of about 1.4 runs, so it’s fair to say that we can expect a regression in Dempster’s home run prevention to cost him about six runs from his ’08 value. Even if he maintains his new found command, he’d still be a bad bet to repeat his 2008 season.

But that’s the beauty of this deal for the Cubs – they’re not paying him like they expect him to repeat his 2008 season. At $14 million per season, they’ve essentially valued him as a +2.5 win pitcher, which would translate to a 4.25 FIP over 180 innings. In other words, they’ve built a regression of almost a full run per nine innings into Dempster’s expected performance, based on this contract.

If Dempster really did establish a new level of performance in ’08, this is going to go down as a massive steal for the Cubs – they’d be getting an all-star pitcher for the same price that Carlos Silva got last winter. He can take a pretty sizable step back and this still would be a positive value contract. Essentially, for this to be a bad deal for the Cubs, Dempster’s going to have to get injured. If he stays healthy, this looks to be a big winner for the north side club.

The Graduate: Clayton Kershaw | Born: March 1988 | Left-Handed Pitcher

The seventh overall selection in the 2006 draft, Clayton Kershaw rocketed through the minor leagues and made his pro debut at the age of 20. He began the season by posting a 1.91 ERA, allowing 39 hits and striking out 59 in 61.1 innings at Double-A. Kershaw was then promoted to the Majors where he allowed 109 hits in 107.2 innings of work. He also posted rates of 4.35 BB/9 and 8.36 K/9. It’s easy to see why Kershaw favored his fastball (which he threw 71.4% of the time) because the lefty averaged 94 mph with it on the radar gun. He also utilized a nasty curveball (23%) and a change-up (5.3%).

The Riser: Victor Garate | Born: September 1984 | Left-Handed Pitcher

The organization is loaded with talent but Victor Garate stands out thanks to his interesting background. A middle reliever in the Houston Astros organization, Garate was nabbed by the Dodgers in the minor league portion of the 2007 Rule 5 draft. He was a little old for A-ball but he took to the starting role like a fish to water, so there may be something there. It will be interesting to see if the Dodgers organization fast-tracks him to Double-A even though he struggled a little bit in a tough pitching environment to finish the season at High-A ball (44 hits allowed in 38.1 innings, but with rates of 3.29 BB/9 and 11.03 K/9). Earlier in the season, Garate carved up A-ball hitters with 61 hits allowed in 77.2 innings. He also posted rates of 3.24 BB/9 and 11.94 K/9. The southpaw has a high-80s fastball and a plus change-up, as well as an OK breaking ball. If he can tighten up his third pitch, Garate could slide into a fourth or fifth starter’s role at the Major League level, thanks in part to solid deception and good command.

The Tumbler: Josh Wall | Born: January 1987 | Right-Handed Pitcher

The former 2005 second round pick out of an LA high school is slowly losing steam in the system. But 6’6” pitchers that can touch the mid-90s earn plenty of chances. Josh Wall allowed 152 hits in 129 innings this past season and posted rates of 4.40 BB/9 and 7.05 K/9. He needs to become more consistent – when he’s bad, he’s really bad – and his maturity has also been questioned. Wall’s ERA in High-A ball was a nasty 6.28 but his FIP showed some potential at 4.56.

The ’08 Draft Pick: Kyle Russell | Born: June 1986 | Outfielder

Kyle Russell made a lot of noise as a draft-eligible sophomore in 2007 by hitting 28 home runs in college but he spurned a pro contract offer from the Cardinals and returned to school for the 2007-08 season. He did not come close to duplicating his outstanding 2007 but he was still selected in the third round of the amateur draft by the Dodgers. Russell had a solid pro debut – albeit in Rookie ball which mainly consists of 17 to 19-year-old players). He hit .279/.358/.534 with 11 home runs and an ISO of .256 in 219 at-bats. Russell will really need to cut down on the strikeouts to succeed at higher levels: 37.4 K% in 2008.

The ’09 Sleeper: Andrew Lambo | Born: August 1988 | Outfielder

Andrew Lambo has been a hitting machine since signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He hit .343 with an OPS of .953 in his debut in 2007 and followed that up with a 2008 line of .288/.345/.462 in A-ball. Lambo also received a brief call-up to Double-A where he hit .389 and slugged three home runs in eight games. He appears to be one of those players that needs motivation to play at his peak and he coasted a bit in A-ball. Lambo has displayed slightly below-average power for a left-fielder but he has more raw strength that could develop into usable power. He also needs to improve his defence.

Up Next: The Boston Red Sox

Perhaps one of the more enigmatic pitchers on the free agent market this winter is A.J. Burnett. When he signed his $55 million contract with the Blue Jays three years ago, people derided it as a disaster for a headcase with injury problems. However, after a couple of solid seasons where he mostly avoided the disabled list and pitched pretty well, the contract became too much of a bargain and Burnett opted out in order to get a bigger paycheck this winter.

How much should teams spend for Burnett’s future, though? Let’s go through the calculations one more time.

Thanks to the new Marcel projections that were just added to the site last night, we can estimate Burnett’s 2009 performance pretty easily. Marcel projects him at 187 innings with a 3.87 FIP for next year, but we’ll round that to 190 innings and a 3.90 FIP just to make the math easier. Once again, we’re going to use a 5.50 FIP as replacement level for a starter and cap his innings at 160, and use a 4.50 FIP as replacement level for a reliever, who will make up the 30 inning difference. So here are the totals that we’re projecting:

Burnett: 190 innings, 82 runs allowed
Replacement Level Starter: 160 innings, 98 runs allowed
Replacement Level Reliever: 30 innings, 15 runs allowed

We’re projecting the replacement level pitchers to allow 113 runs, or 31 more than what we’re projecting for Burnett. That would translate to +3 wins for whoever signs him. We can once again add a bit of a bonus to account for his extra innings saving the bullpen, so let’s call Burnett a +3.3 win pitcher.

3.3 wins * 5.5 million per win = $18.15 million in projected 2009 value. We again factor in a 10% discount rate to make up for the fact that he’s going to get a long term deal, and that gives us an annual average value of $16.4 million. Given Burnett’s history, it’s unlikely he’ll get more than four or five years. That puts his projected contract at 4 years/$66 million or 5 years/$82 million.

Those numbers match up fairly well with what the rumors have pegged his price tag at. It seems unlikely that Burnett will be either a huge bargain or a big albatross this winter.

The free agency period began last Friday, and some teams have wasted little time making offers both curious, as in the supposed over-bidding on CC Sabathia by the Yankees, and apparently laughable, as in Scott Boras’ reaction to the Dodgers offer to Manny Ramirez. Some free agents have been signed, as well, including lefty reliever Scott Eyre (Phillies), and, well, lefty reliever Jeremy Affeldt (Giants). Will Ohman, another lefty reliever, is currently being courted by the Braves, and another lefty reliever, Joe Beimel, is rumored to be on the Giants wish-list.

Beimel had a decent year for the Dodgers in 2008, that was made to look much better by a shiny 2.02 ERA. His FIP of 3.30 was more telling of his actual ability this past season, but as a lefty specialist who only amassed 49 innings in 71 appearances, his 1.45 WHIP and 1.52 K/BB were masked by an 85.1% strand rate. In 2007, his K/BB was essentially the same, though a .291 BABIP, a full 30 points lower than this year’s .320, helped produce a 1.29 WHIP. Despite this, his strand rate was a below average 67%, leading to a higher 3.88 ERA. Beimel’s FIP, however, was 3.39, right in line with the 3.30 from this past season.

How does a pitcher with a K/9 barely over 5.5 and a BB/9 over 3.0 produce such solid FIP marks? Well, he doesn’t give up home runs. In 2008, Beimel did not surrender any longballs. The year prior, he allowed just one ball to leave the yard. Yes, over the past two seasons, Joe Beimel has allowed just one home run. I struggled to wrap my head around this and decided to look up how many “peers” he has in this regard.

Looking strictly at those with 50+ total innings combined in 2007 and 2008, three pitchers did not surrender any home runs: Jim Johnson, Joey Devine, and Kevin Cameron. These three, however, primarily pitched in just one season, with Johnson appearing in just one 2007 game, Devine appearing in just ten, and Cameron making only ten appearances in 2008. Suffice it to say, nobody who has logged significant time over each of the last two seasons has been effective enough not to surrender a home run.

With this new qualifier, Beimel tops the list with 155 games and just one home run allowed. That is 117.1 innings of 3.07 ERA baseball, and just one gopherball. After Beimel, the next lowest amount of home runs surrendered by a pitcher with significant time in both seasons is three, belonging to both Matt Lindstrom (137 games) and Kerry Wood (87 games).

Three pitchers have allowed only four home runs in 2007-08: Saul Rivera (162 games!), Chad Bradford (147 games), and Randy Flores (113 games). Below are some stats for these six pitchers:

Joe Beimel:     155 g, 117.1 IP, 1 HR, 3.07 ERA,  2.40 WPA
Matt Lindstrom: 137 g, 124.1 IP, 3 HR, 3.11 ERA,  2.07 WPA
Kerry Wood:      87 g,  90.2 IP, 3 HR, 3.28 ERA,  0.64 WPA
Saul Rivera:    162 g, 180.0 IP, 4 HR, 3.75 ERA,  1.61 WPA
Chad Bradford:  147 g, 125.0 IP, 4 HR, 2.74 ERA,  0.93 WPA
Randy Flores:   113 g,  80.2 IP, 4 HR, 4.57 ERA, -1.61 WPA

Beimel allowed seven home runs in 2006, giving him a grand total of eight allowed over the last three seasons. How does that stack up with the rest of the league in the same span? Looking at pitchers with significant time in each season—BJ Ryan would be in this list but he only made five appearances in 2007—we see that Bradford tops all others with just five home runs allowed. Sean Green of the Mariners is next at just seven allowed, with Beimel and Saul Rivera joining the fray with only eight gopherballs surrendered.

With Beimel’s poor strikeout and walk rates, he should not really be anything other than a specialist reliever, but pitching in San Francisco, assuming the Giants ink him soon, there really isn’t any reason why the home run numbers should crazily regress, especially if he only faces one or two batters in each appearance. Beimel is more likely a 3.40-3.50 true talent ERA pitcher, but that is still quite good, and with lefty relievers flying off the shelves, it would not shock me at all to see him signed before this week ends.

Well, thank goodness for that. The process is still broken and the results still head-scratchingly inane at (often) times, but at least the end result was on the money today as Albert Pujols nabbed his second MVP Award.

Big Al was 2nd in average, 2nd in on base percentage, 1st in slugging, 1st in OPS, 1st in runs created as a rate and as a counting stat. He was 3rd in WPA* but 1st in BRAA and WPA/LI by a mile in each category. Oh and he also plays some of the best first base defense in the league. In short, Pujols was the best non-pitcher in the National League, hands down. And he won, so hurrah for that.

Were there mistakes in the voting? Oh yes. Dave Cameron covered the continuing under appreciation of Chase Utley earlier. The also always criminally underrated Chipper Jones also finished outside the top ten despite being the leader in many of the categories that Pujols finished second in.

Johan Santana, Brandon Webb, Brad Lidge and CC Sabathia all got more votes for MVP than Tim Lincecum, who the BBWAA named the best pitcher in the league, received. I guess that means they were taking the valuable part of Most Valuable Player literally, but then again, the Mets and Diamondbacks missed the playoffs just as the Giants did and how would you really determine which was more valuable anyways? Oh yeah, WPA.

Sorting by WPA, here’s the top five players in the NL for 2008 with their finish in the MVP voting in parenthesis:
1.Manny Ramirez (4th)*
2.Lance Berkman (5th)
3.Albert Pujols (1st)
4.Carlos Beltran (22nd)
5.Matt Holliday (19th)

No pitchers on that list, but if it went down far enough, you’d see Tim Linceum at the top. So how exactly was Johan Santana or Brandon Webb more worthy of votes?

Now here’s the top five vote getters for MVP in the NL with their WPA rank in parenthesis:
1.Albert Pujols (3rd)
2.Ryan Howard (30th)
3.Ryan Braun (14th)
4.Manny Ramirez (1st)
5.Lance Berkman (2nd)

I don’t ask for the latter list to be identical to the former list. Okay, I sort of do (with some WPA/LI and defense thrown in), but for knowledge’s sake, at least make it close in the first three spots.

In retrospect, it’s probably good that Brad Lidge got as many votes as he did, for if he didn’t those votes might have gone to Ryan Howard and been enough to put him over Albert Pujols and marked 2008 as one (again) for the MVP Award infamous record books.

*If you count Manny’s WPA number as his combined Red Sox and Dodgers WPA figures.

Tom Tango has released the official 2009 Marcel the Monkey projections. They’re available here on FanGraphs in both the sortable variety and in all the player pages too!

Here’s exactly what they are:

“[Marcels] is the most basic forecasting system you can have, that uses as little intelligence as possible. So, that’s the allusion to the monkey. It uses 3 years of MLB data, with the most recent data weighted heavier. It regresses towards the mean. And it has an age factor.”

As many of you now know, last week we unveiled some tremendous new metrics. Available on individual player pages as well as the leaderboards, you now have access to plate discipline metrics for pitchers and pitch type statistics for hitters. The former includes information along the lines of how often a pitcher induced a swing out of the zone, in the zone, as well as his percentage of first-pitch strikes. The latter includes the percentages, and velocities, of pitches seen for hitters, as well as his percentage of first-pitch strikes seen.

I wrote a bit of an introduction to these new statistics last week, and David has written several glossary-type entries as well. This is the type of information that has piqued my interest for a long, long time, and it now adds another dimension to evaluations. For instance, did you know that Johan Santana posted an O-Swing % (percentage of pitches out of the zone that batters swung at) of 30.1 in 2005 and 2006, which decreased to 28.2% in 2007, and 26.8% this past season?

Using the new statistics, I decided to run some correlations to see if certain statistics held strong relationships to each other. First, here are the results for correlations run between the percentage of first-pitch strikes and six prominent evaluative statistics:

F-Strike %

K/9:    0.194
BB/9:  -0.719
WHIP:  -0.515
BABIP:  0.096
ERA:   -0.31
FIP:   -0.406

The results here are not that shocking, or at least they should not be. Getting ahead of the hitter is generally considered key for the pitcher. Doing so, in theory, should correlate quite strongly to any metric involving walks. As we can see, there is a very strong relationship between the percentage of first-pitch strikes and the walks per nine innings issued by pitchers. The relationship loses a bit of its strength when hits allowed are added to the equation in the form of WHIP, but the -0.719 correlation between F-Strike% and BB/9 is actually the strongest of any that I ran. Here are the results for O-Swing % and the same six evaluative metrics:

O-Swing %

K/9:     0.281
BB/9:   -0.493
WHIP:   -0.462
BABIP:   0.036
ERA:    -0.362
FIP:    -0.428

Here, the results are a bit different. Nothing is incredibly strong or on the same wavelength of strength as the FStrike-BB/9, but we have a few relationships of moderate strength. What exactly is O-Swing? It is the percentage of pitches that a pitcher threw out of the zone, that a hitter swung at. With this in mind, we might initially expect that pitchers with the highest percentages in this area would strike more batters out, walk less, and therefore be very effective in the ERA and FIP department. One thing to keep in mind, though, is the percentage of pitches that these pitchers throw in and out of the zone.

Jake Peavy and Barry Zito, for instance, were amongst the bottom in terms of percentage of pitches thrown in the zone, at around 47%. However, Peavy induced many more swings on these pitches than Zito, which is a big reason for the difference between the two, since their percentages of pitches in and out of the zone were virtually identical. When we have pitchers with different percentages in the mix, as is the case in the correlations using O-Swing, the results should not be as concrete. Overall, the strongest relationship here also involves BB/9, as the idea goes back to the Peavy/Zito example: Peavy gets swings and outs on pitches out of the zone, Zito does not. The higher the percentage is of swings out of the zone, the better the chance is that the BB/9 will be lower.

Lastly, Z-Swing%, which is still a bit curious. For instance, does a pitcher want a higher or lower percentage here? I would venture a guess that a lower percentage would be better, as the pitch is already in the zone and therefore very likely to be called a strike. A hitter failing to swing will take a called strike. It probably is not as important as FStrike or O-Swing, but here are the correlations:

Z-Swing %

K/9:   -0.067
BB/9:  -0.014
WHIP:  -0.037
BABIP: -0.150
ERA:   -0.027
FIP:    0.087

Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter for pitchers, as the percentage of swings induced on pitches in the strike zone does not share anything close to a strong relationship with any of the above six metrics. Interestingly enough, the highest correlation for Z-Swing involved BABIP, which was the lowest for F-Strike and O-Swing. The -0.150 isn’t significant by any means, though, so nothing should be taken away by that. At the very least, these results show what we would generally expect: the more first-pitch strikes, the lower the rate of walks or vice versa, and inducing swings out of the zone can result in better rate and run prevention stats.