There’s another article of mine up on Baseball Analysts about how the strike zone expands/contracts as the count changes and how different some pitchers take advantage of it.

“Ideally, a pitcher is going to try and get ahead in the count and when this happens the pitcher has effectively “expanded the strike zone” since the batter is now on the defensive and will be more prone to chase pitches outside the strike zone. Conversely, when a pitcher is behind in the count, a batter will be less prone to chasing bad pitches. Looking at OSwing by count this becomes fairly evident.”

You can find the rest of the article here: Expanding the Strike Zone

Last week Baseball Analysts published my article Generalities in Pitch Location, which led Tangotiger to ask the following question:

“…how often does Brandon Webb and his brothers get a GB on balls thrown down and balls thrown up the zone. That is, are they “true” groundball pitchers, who can get batters to hit the ball on the ground, because they can. Or, are they groundball pitchers, as a byproduct of them throwing the ball low?”

First let’s take a look at ground ball percentage by pitch location on a major league level.

I don’t think there are too many surprises here. The lower the pitch, the greater the chance that it will be hit on the ground. So, let’s look at what Brandon Webb‘s (extreme groundball pitcher) chart looked like the past two season, compared to say Barry Zito’s (extreme fly ball pitcher).

Starting with Webb, we can see that no matter where he throws the ball, there’s a pretty good chance it will end up being a groundball. Zito on the other hand, will have a greater chance of inducing a fly ball despite the location of the pitch.

Now if you were to calculate a so called, “expected” groundball percentage based on the pitch locations of balls hit into play for a particular player and the league average groundball percentage for that particular pitch location, you’d see that Webb has an expected GB% of about 48%, while Zito’s is 44%.

All in all, a pretty similar “expected” groundball percentage based on pitch location and major league averages, but in reality the two couldn’t be further apart. Webb’s actual GB% the past two years is about 66% with Zito’s being around 39%.

It would seem, at least in the case of these two pitchers, that their ability (or lack there of) to induce groundballs is not entirely a function of where they throws the ball, but probably reliant on several other factors.

Thought I’d mention that I have an article on Pitch Location running this week on Baseball Analysts. Here’s a little teaser….

“How often have you heard a player attribute his success to “throwing more pitches inside,” or heard a manager say a pitcher was “hitting his spots?” Pretty much everyone talks about pitch location, but how often is it actually quantified? Thankfully, our pals over at Baseball Info Solutions tracked the x-y coordinates of nearly all 1.5 million pitches thrown the past two seasons. Let’s start by looking at the average major league pitch locations broken down by batter/pitcher handedness.”

You can find the rest of the article here: Generalities in Pitch Location

I figured I’d share a little tool that FanGraphs and Baseball Analysts have been using internally for a little while now. Basically you paste the text of an article into the text box, select whatever parameters you want, and then hit the link button.

All the properly spelled, full player names will have hyperlinks to the stats pages on FanGraphs, giving your readers the option to see more detailed stats about that particular player.

Feel free to send us your suggestions and if you have any special requests that would make using the tool easier for your particular site, don’t hesitate to ask.

To access the tool, click here . . . .

Career postseason stats have been added to the stats pages and 2002-2005 postseason game logs have been added to the game log pages

Post season stats will be updated throughout the playoffs with a 24-48 hour delay.

With the regular season finally over, it’s time to start thinking about who should be the recipient of the National League Cy Young award. A month ago, I thought Chris Carpenter was a shoe in to win for the second straight year, but over the past month, the landscape has significantly changed.

Roy Oswalt won 6 of his last 8 starts to put himself in contention while Brandon Webb righted the ship with a strong September posting a 2.43 ERA including two complete games. Then of course there are the relievers, who aren’t typically in Cy Young talks, but would the Padres be in the playoffs without Trevor Hoffman, or the Dodgers without Takashi Saito? Maybe you could even throw the Mets’ Billy Wagner into the discussion.

Just looking at the three starting pitcher candidates of Carpenter, Oswalt and Webb, they had freakishly similar seasons:

Name             W   L    Inn  ShO  CG   ERA   SO  BB  WHIP   WPA
Chris Carpenter  15  8  221.2    3   5  3.09  184  43  1.07  3.38
Roy Oswalt       15  8  220.2    0   2  2.98  166  38  1.17  4.15
Brandon Webb     16  8  235.0    3   5  3.10  178  50  1.13  3.69

How do you choose between these three? Webb has the most innings and wins. Oswalt has the best ERA and Win Probability Added (WPA). Carpenter has the most strikeouts and the best WHIP. May as flip a coin (a three sided coin). Their offenses all gave them about the same amount of run support too, so you can’t even say one of them should have more wins.

If I had a vote, my personal preference of the three would lean towards Oswalt. If you take away his one relief appearance, his WPA jumps to 4.43, which is nearly one win more than either Webb or Carpenter. Also, he’s coming off back to back 20 win seasons which were certainly Cy Young worthy, but just slightly worse than the eventual winners.

But what about those relievers? Their seasons were pretty similar too:

Name             W   L   SV   BS    Inn    ERA   SO   BB  WHIP   WPA    LI
Takashi Saito    6   2   24    2    78.1  2.07  107   23  0.91  4.09  1.50
Trevor Hoffman   0   2   46    5    63.0  2.14   50   13  0.97  4.04  2.08
Billy Wagner     3   2   40    5    72.1  2.24   94   21  1.11  3.85  1.88

This is also a tough group of pitchers to pick a winner from. Even though Saito had about 20 less saves than Hoffman or Wagner, he still managed to top them both in WPA, not to mention his 107 strikeouts are pretty off the charts. Hoffman was used in the most difficult situations of the three, according to his Leverage Index (LI) and he did lead the majors in saves. Wagner falls a bit short of both Hoffman and Saito, but he still had a stellar season, though probably not Cy Young worthy.

If I had to choose one I’d go with Hoffman since he’s pitched in more pressure packed situations than any of the three and he’s been nothing but stellar all season long. Saito should probably take home the NL Rookie of the Year award, but that’s an entirely different discussion.

So for me at least, it comes down to either Oswalt or Hoffman and I’m seriously torn between the two of them. I really think Oswalt will (and should) win a Cy Young award eventually, but I’d really love to see Hoffman win now, especially in a year where there’s no clear cut starting pitcher. Capturing the career lead in saves, leading his team to the playoffs, and winning the Cy Young award, all in the twilight of his career, sure would make a feel good story.

A number of Win Probability aficionados have pointed out that So Taguchi was inacurately credited with -0.193 wins for his 8th inning lead-off walk. The problem has now been fixed and he has been accurately credited with 0.096 wins.

It’s worth noting that in this same game, Albert Pujols‘ home run was worth 0.624 wins and it was the 4th time this season he’s had a single at-bat worth more than 0.5 wins. He’s the only player, in the five years of win probability data I have, that has 4 hits worth over 0.5 wins in a single season. Since 2002, he’s had 6 such regular season hits, which is also the most in the majors. Make it 7 if you count his one post-season hit worth 0.716 wins:

Playoff Win Probability graphs have been added for the 2002-2005 seasons. Relive the joy/pain of the 2003 Aaron Boone home run, or see just how close the Giants were to winning it all in 2002.

From now until the playoffs we’ll be updating the various sections of the site with playoff stats to compliment our regular season stats. Also, don’t forget that FanGraphs will continue to have daily updated Win Probability graphs and all the usual stats throughout the 2006 playoffs.

Tangotiger is doing his fourth annual fielding survey: The 2006 Scouting Report by the Fans for the Fans. The balloting ends soon, so don’t forget to fill out a ballot before the 2006 “Globe Gloves” are awarded.

As I was browsing the new leaderboards, I noticed that Albert Pujols has the 10th fewest strikeouts among qualified players with only 43. That’s pretty damn impressive for a guy who’s hit 45 home runs this season. Actually, it’s a little more than impressive as there’s only been six other players who have more home runs than strikeouts and have hit over 40 home runs.

Name            Season       HR       SO
---------------------------------------------
Mel Ott           1929       42       38
Lou Gehrig        1934       49       31
Lou Gehrig        1936       49       46
Joe DiMaggio      1937       46       37
Johnny Mize       1947       51       42
Johnny Mize       1948       40       37
Ted Kluszewski    1953       40       34
Ted Kluszewski    1954       49       35
Ted Kluszewski    1955       47       40
*Barry Bonds      2004       45       41

* - denotes MVP Season

Only Barry Bonds has accomplished the 40-plus home run season with fewer strikeouts since 1955 and he’s the only one to win an MVP award in the same season. Hitting 30 home runs with fewer strikeouts has been slightly more rewarding in the MVP department and is still a very exclusive club.

Name            Season       HR       SO
---------------------------------------------
Ken Williams      1922       39       31
Lefty O'Doul      1929       32       19
Al Simmons        1930       36       34
Joe DiMaggio      1938       32       31
*Joe DiMaggio     1939       30       20
Joe DiMaggio      1940       31       30
Ted Williams      1941       37       27
*Joe DiMaggio     1941       30       13
Willard Marshal   1947       36       30
*Stan Musial      1948       39       34
Joe DiMaggio      1948       39       30
Andy Pafko        1950       36       32
Yogi Berra        1952       30       24
Yogi Berra        1956       30       29
Ted Kluszewski    1956       35       31

* - denotes MVP Season

Is there a point to this? Not really, but it’s fun trivia and maybe fodder for your MVP discussions.

And speaking of the MVP, a few days ago (September 9th), Ryan Howard briefly overtook Pujols for the major league lead in WPA. Before that, Pujols led the majors in WPA since April 16th (145 days). Last night’s 2-run walk-off double put Pujols back on top by a margin of 0.73 wins.