A Few Questions

Here at FanGraphs, we attempt to answer a lot of questions. How good is this guy compared to that guy? Who throws the hardest? Which pitches are effective against different hitters? What should I expect from that rookie?

For the next few days, however, I’m going to take a slightly different approach. As baseball analysis has begun to explode on the web, there is no shortage of answers to common questions. However, I think that we may have a shortage of questions. So, rather than attempting to figure out something that we want to know, I’d like to spend a few days trying to figure out what else we should want to know.

I’m not going to have any answers on this. My hope is that this would turn into a discussion where we can stimulate some ideas for what things may be worth answering in the future, even if we can’t answer them now. What don’t we know that may be important, and that we maybe haven’t even attempted to answer yet?

The main area in baseball that still strikes me as something of a mystery is pitching. We understand some things about the art of pitching. We know that, in general, more velocity is good, and it helps to be able to throw the ball in the strike zone with regularity. But do we have any idea why some guys have good command and other’s don’t?

Really, this seems like a fairly basic thing, but I don’t know if we have an answer. We could throw out a word like “mechanics,” but what does that tell us, really? For all the talk about good and bad mechanics, there doesn’t seem to be a “do-this-thing-and-you’ll-succeed” blueprint. Different stuff works for different guys. So what is it that drives a pitcher’s command? Arm angle? Muscle memory? Practice?

I don’t know. Maybe you do – if so, great, let’s hear it (with proof, please). But this seems like something we’d like to know, right? So, this is my question – what else should we want to know that we don’t? What parts of baseball have we just not given attention to?





Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

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CMC_Stags
14 years ago

Dave –

Would working on this also give some insight into any measurable effects from Catcher game calling? It seems like off all the position players, Catchers are the most difficult to measure defensively and much of that stems from the debate over their ability to affect the pitcher’s performance.

Things like WP & PB, CS vs SB, errors, and the like can all be measured and give some insight into a Catcher’s defensive performance. Without being able to measure things like framing, game calling, any effect of pitcher comfort, etc., measuring only what we currently can for catchers probably leaves out some undetermined amount of their value (or cost) behind the plate.

Bradley Woodrummember
14 years ago
Reply to  CMC_Stags

One of the great difficulties in measuring a catcher’s ability to call a game is the difference in starting pitchers.

Last year, the guys at DRaysBay tried to compare Dioner Navarro and Michel Hernandez, but the comparison lacked significant sample sizes for Michel, the back up. To avoid the sample size issue, we have to compare full-time catchers — but this returns to the original problem of pitching ability. A Braves catcher (best team FIP) is invariably going to appear better than any Orioles catcher (worst team FIP). How can we normalize this? Does it come down to pitch sequencing, like longghandi mentions below, or is there some other way to examine this?

Jimbo
14 years ago

Similar to measuring park factors, I wonder if there is enough data to use umpires as the ‘control.’ While they have individual zones, who gets more called strikes than average against ‘x’ ump?

For that matter, I’d like to know more about umpire influence. You hear “this ump has a small zone”–not that size matters–but how much does that influence a pitcher’s results? It happens every day where a guy gets squeezed and then gives up runs out of frustration, or just the knowledge that they have to get more of the plate. And hitters know that too. On the flip side, your Edwin Jacksons can surprise with a 10-whiff gem with a bit of help.

I don’t think it is a quality-of-game issue, since both teams have the same umpire, but start to start I bet it does influence pitchers. Get enough ‘small-zone’ vs ‘large-zone’ umpires throughout the season and I’d be willing to bet there’s correlation to ERA/FIP variation.

Similar to hittracker’s “just enough” info, it would be nice to know which pitchers were helped/hindered the most by umpire-effect.

LoydKristmis
14 years ago

Building on what Jimbo was saying, what about stats for home plate umpires? This could be relevant for betting and fantasy purposes if a guy with a notoriously large strike zone is gonig to be calling a game, you may want to take the under for example. Does anyone know if UMP FIP or anything like that being tracked anywhere? There may be some serious issues, but I don’t think sample size would be one of them.