If being a subject of more study, research and incredulity than perhaps any other pitcher in baseball is a burden to R.A. Dickey, the down-to-earth New York Met doesn’t show it. Perhaps it’s because he’s studied, researched and been baffled by the knuckleball more than anyone in the game these days. Maybe he welcomes the help. Given his status as Lead Knuckleball Researcher, it made sense to ask the all-star about some findings about his work and his unique pitch.

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While watching the Mets pound on the Cubs yesterday, I noticed that David Wright still has a walk rate (BB%) higher than his strikeout rate (K%). If Wright managed to continue this trend through the end of the season it would be the first time in his career he achieved such a feat.

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When we look at a hitter that’s struggling to produce, we have plenty of peripherals at our disposal. When we look at a pitcher that’s struggling with his control, we have… two? We have his zone percentage, and we have his first-strike percentage. We can compare those to the league average and hope we have a sense of how important either is to his walk rate going forward.

Well, let’s see how well these things correlate to walk rate. Why not.

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A number of pitchers with noticeably lower velocity this year either have landed on the disabled list or have had their seasons cut short due to injury. The Pirates’ Charlie Morton had Tommy John surgery (age 28, down 1.5 mph). The Tigers’ Doug Fister (age 28, down 1.1 mph) and the Blue Jays’ Brandon Morrow (age 27, down 1 mph) have both landed on the DL with oblique injuries. And the White Sox’ John Danks (age 27, down 1.5 mph) just started a stint on the DL due to elbow soreness.

Previously, I found that pitchers who lose at least 1 mph of velocity have over twice the odds of not throwing at least 40 innings in the subsequent year. This could simply be due to ineffectiveness, injury or both. A steep decline in velocity can create — or be a signal for — all sorts of problems. If a pitcher loses velocity simply due to a tired arm, they can increase their chance for injury by trying to pitch through it. Losing velocity also tends to make pitchers less effective over time. And once a pitcher loses velocity, the odds of regaining at least some of it the following year are very low (more on this below).

Today, I want to look at how age impacts the chances of regaining velocity for pitchers and then highlight some hurlers who fans should keep their eyes on this year and next year.

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UPDATED

Last week I wrote about how losing velocity at different ages impacts a pitcher’s chance to throw 40 or fewer innings the next season (what I labeled “attrition”).

The overall finding was that losing velocity at any age increases the likelihood of attrition for pitchers, and that likelihood only increases with age. Overall, pitchers in the data set had a 29% chance of attrition between years one and two. If they lost at least 1 mph on their fastball, however, that rate jumped to 39%. Pitchers that didn’t lose at least 1 mph only had an 18% attrition rate–so half the odds. Starting at age 34, the attrition rate jumped to 50% and climbed for each age cohort until roughly age 39. (Thirty-eight-year-olds who lost velocity magically bucked the trend, attriting at about the same rate as all other pitchers.)

Eno Sarris asked me whether, as some have suggested, pitchers who relied on a change-up as their primary secondary pitch (such as a James Shields or Mark Buehrle) gained some kind of advantage, in terms of attrition. Do these pitchers have a lower chance of injury or ineffectiveness than someone who relies heavily on either a curveball (e.g. A.J. Burnett) or a slider (e.g. Ervin Santana)?

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Last night against the Angels, Hector Noesi served up another home run on an 0-2 count. As a fan, having a pitcher of my team give up one of those is up there with one of the more disheartening occurances in an individual baseball game. The count is as lopsided as it can be in favor of the pitcher. To go from that to the single most hitter-friendly outcome is a jarring, unexpected and sometimes crushing whiplash.

And since I watch* Mariner games and almost only Mariner games, I have a disproportionate sense that every 0-2 home run in the history of baseball have been given up by Mariner pitchers**. Perhaps you feel that way about your team too. But personal observation is a crude and misleading way to go about forming beliefs unless you want to look like a big stupidhead the second you run into a person*** with actual data.

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Note: The attrition data and chart was updated, showing a larger gap for just about all age cohorts

On May 26, the Twins released 33-year-old starter Jason Marquis. Considering how bad Twins pitchers have been this season, it really spoke to how bad Marquis’ numbers were to that point in the season.

In seven starts, Marquis posted a 8.47 ERA and a 7.25 FIP, numbers driven largely by a 7.5% strikeout rate, a 27.3% HR/FB and a sky-high .352 BABIP against. There was some speculation that, since Marquis has lost about 2 mph on his fastball since 2009, it was likely that he’d become more hittable — particularly at age 33.

This led to some discussion on Twitter about whether there was a greater likelihood that Marquis’ velocity drop at his age was more of an issue than if he had been a younger pitcher. It’s a legitimate question — whether diminished velocity has an impact, depending on age.

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Mets first baseman Ike Davis has seen the number of fastballs thrown to him drop significantly since his rookie season in 2010. In that year, 57% of the pitches thrown to Davis were some type of fastball. So far in 2012? Only 51%. There have been only 30 seasons between 2007 and 2011 where a hitter with more than 100 plate appearances saw a lower percentage of fastballs in a season than Ike this year — and only five where a player accumulated more than 500 plate appearances.

Clearly pitchers are adjusting to Davis, altering their approach based upon Davis’ perceived offensive strengths and weaknesses. This got me thinking about the extent to which major league pitchers adjust to hitters from year to year. Was this change significant, or more common based on the normal adjustments hitters can expect to see from year to year.

As a first cut, I decided to look at changes in the pitch types that batters faced in consecutive years. Throwing hitters a different mix of pitches (i.e. fastballs, curveballs, sliders, etc.) is just one way the league can adjust. Pitchers can alter location, sequence and speed. However, the data was more readily available for pitch types, so the choice was made to focus there first. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Petti published the first two parts of a series on pitcher aging. Bill’s first article focused on pitchers, in general, and the second was on the difference between starters and relievers. For the third installment, I’ll look at aging patterns for pitchers who maintain a relatively constant velocity from year-to-year.

From the previous articles, the average pitcher loses about 4 mph from their fastball from ages 21 to 38. In essence, most pitchers’ stats degrade as their fastball speed drops. Using the same methodology, I wanted to know how pitchers age when they don’t lose velocity on their pitches.

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After suffering through an abysmal 2011 season, White Sox designated hitter Adam Dunn is off to a fantastic start this year.

Last season, the 31-year-old Dunn put up a career-low .266 weighted on-base average (wOBA), or 59 wRC+, in nearly 500 plate appearances. His on-base percentage — which normally was a strength for the slugger — was .292, or 62 points below his previous career low when he was 23. Most disturbing was the sudden disappearance of his power. Dunn has always been a high-strikeout, high-walk, high-slugging player. But last year, Dunn posted an isolated power of only .118. To put that into perspective, consider this: Dunn’s ISO was only two points higher than Nyjer Morgan’s (.116). Dunn also saw his HR/FB ratio drop to 9.6% in a hitter- and home-run-friendly park. His previous career-low was 17.8%, all the way back in 2002.

But now? Well, we’re seeing the old Adam Dunn. Through May 7, he has managed a .394 wOBA, which is fueled by a .364 OBP, .321 ISO and a 28.1% HR/FB. And both the ISO and HR/FB numbers are better than his career highs. The obvious question is whether these numbers are sustainable. Given how quickly outcomes like BB% and HR/FB stabilize, there’s a good chance that Dunn’s end-of-season numbers could be similar to what they are today. The question I have is what is Dunn doing differently? To get a better handle on this, I took a look at Dunn’s performance on specific pitches in different locations.

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