Batters Faced Over Time
A tweet from Jeff Sullivan this afternoon sparked my curiosity into batters faced totals and I headed to Baseball-Reference to dig around. I enjoy using batters faced rather than innings pitched for two main reasons. One, because I think it’s a better measure for durability. Number of pitches is actually even better, in my opinion. Secondly, I think it makes for a much better denominator in rate stats than the more standard per nine innings.
On the subject of the tweet itself, how many people know or remember that Tanyon Sturtze led the American League in batters faced in 2002? He also led the league in losses, hits allowed, earned runs allowed and walks. Not all sunshine for Tanyon down in Tampa that season.
Less surprising is that Livan Hernandez led the National League in batters faced multiple times. Three straight seasons, from 2003 through 2005, in fact. Livan faced 3,085 batters during those three years, logging 734.2 innings pitched. The next highest for that same time period was Greg Maddux at 2,709 batters faced (over 300 fewer than Livan) and 656 innings pitched (nearly 80 fewer). Maddux’s achievement was possibly more impressive given that he was between 37 and 39 years old at the time while Livan was in his late 20s/early 30s.
It pales a bit in comparison to Phil Niekro between 1977 and 1979, however, as Niekro’s 4,253 batters faced was 847 more than second place J.R. Richard. Some of the other names on the 2003-5 combined National League list are a hoot. Brian Lawrence, 5th most batters faced. 11th through 15th were Jason Schmidt, Dontrelle Willis, Woody Williams, Matt Morris and Russ Ortiz.
2005 marked the last year so far that a pitcher has repeated an appearance atop the batters faced leader board, and it happened in both leagues as Mark Buehrle in the AL joined Livan Hernandez. Since then it’s been Barry Zito, CC Sabathia, Roy Halladay and Justin Verlander in the American League and Aaron Harang, Brandon Webb, Johan Santana (he never led while with Minnesota, weird) and Adam Wainwright in the National League. So who takes over in 2010?
Matthew Carruth is a software engineer who has been fascinated with baseball statistics since age five. When not dissecting baseball, he is watching hockey or playing soccer.
The twins seemed to protect Santana when he was there. Radke was the #1 starter through 2006, and 2007 the twins were out of the race so there was no reason to push him.
Matthew, I like you, so I’m gonna help you out. You want the word “led,” not “lead.”
Yeah, I cringed all article long…
Yeah, but make sure you’re helping the man fix mistakes, not point it out in order to feel important (many here do this).
Yes, sorry about that and thanks for the non-snarky correction.
Wouldn’t it be better to face more batters than to throw more pitches???
IE
pitcher 1 throws 3000 pitches but faces 900 batters
pitcher 2 throws 3000 pitches but faces 1000 batters
Pitcher 2 is clearly the better pitcher.
Sadly, this info is a pain in the ass to organize. The closest you get is P/PA on ESPN. I’ve been hoping Fangraphs would add P/PA for hitters and P/Batter for pitchers.
Maybe they will one day…
Unless, of course, Pitcher 2 simply couldn’t get people to swing and miss.
I think Lincecum overtakes everybody in 2010. That man is just a workhorse.
“while Livan was in his late 20s/early 30s.”
I think you mean late 30s/early 40s? 40s/50s?
Lincecum probably won’t lead because he doesn’t walk a lot of hitters nor does he give up many hits so he’s more efficient. I do not agree that batters faced is better than IP because it’s more efficient to pitch 9 innings only face 27 than 9 innings and face 30.
Isn’t efficiency combined with innings better?
I too am not sure whether leading the league in batters faced deserves accolades… It is clearly the best denominator to use for pitching metrics, but it doesn’t seem to serve much purpose other than that, besides letting you know who worked the hardest..? I guess?
I’m impressed that a pitcher could lead the league in walks and hits allowed and still keep getting the innings to do it. I’m more impressed that Mike Hampton threw 178 innings walking more than he struck out. Yikes.
I could see someone like Jason Marquis lead the NL in batters faced. Always throws a lot of innings, always allows a lot of baserunners, and the Nationals are a bad team with a terrible bullpen so they don’t really have much incentive to pull him early even if he’s getting hit around a bit.
Facing a lot of guys just shows that you allow alot of baserunners and are at that special level of endurance/inning eating that only great players like Livan Hernandez can achieve.
Like it was mentioned, the best case scenario in baseball is to face 27 over 9 IP.
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excited to look into a lot more of your posts, good bye 😉