Read about the worst relative strikeout seasons here.

A natural extension of seeking to identify the worst pitching strikeout season in baseball history is to find the best. That covers the two extremes. I suppose I could do the most average strikeout seasons next, but (yawn) I had to go take a nap after just writing that sentence.

What I really enjoy about looking at baseball in this way is that it often gives me a fresh perspective on history that I’ve long lost the ability to recall. Such is the case here where exploring the topic of lots of strikeouts led me to a lot of reading about two pitchers in particular from baseball’s past that I hadn’t thought about, statistically, in a while.

Before I get to them, Pedro Martinez’s remarkable 1999 season deserves a digital nod of acknowledgement. It takes a mountain of talent to rack up enough strikeouts to more than double the league rate when that rate is already as high as 16%, but that’s what Pedro did in ’99, striking out 37.5% of batters he faced. It’s in the top ten of all time and the best since integration.

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In the past, while researching pitchers that had started team’s Opening Day games, I came across the name Glenn Abbott. Abbott had been the Mariners’ Opening Day starter a few times including in 1979, the team’s third year in existence. During that season, Abbott would go on to be pretty awful over 518 batters faced. Notably, he struck out just 25 hitters that year, a 4.8% strikeout rate that I found fascinating in its ineptness.

Late last week however, Jeff Sullivan reminded me of the 2003 Detroit Tigers and a Lookout Landing reader noted Nate Cornejo’s season that year in which Cornejo fanned a mere 46 hitters over a larger 842 batter sample. Amazingly, Cornejo netted 1.9 WAR that year. Cornejo’s strikeout rate was superior to Abbott’s by a touch, but it struck me that because of the changing nature of the game, with strikeouts more frequent in 2003 than in 1979, that Cornejo’s season was perhaps worthier of enshrining.

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Earlier this week on Twitter, I was part of a discussion comparing Troy Tulowitzki and Evan Longoria, two of the best players in the game. I personally give Longoria a slight edge, but obviously Tulowitzki is great, too. If someone prefers him to Longoria, that is fine, and I could probably be talked in to it. What really spurs this particular post is the discussion we had about comparing their offense. Keeping in mind that this was a casual discussion rather than a deep evaluation of “true talent” involving all of the necessary regression and adjustments, someone noted that over the last three seasons (2009-2011) the two players have had virtually identical offensive value per plate appearance: Tulowitzki has a 137 wRC+, and Longoria has a 136 wRC+. I argued that Longoria’s performance was more impressive given that the American League has superior pitching relative to the National League.

However, Dave Cameron made an interesting point: the Rockies play in the National League West, where hitters seemingly face s larger proportion of stud pitchers — Dave mentioned Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Clayton Kershaw, and Mat Latos in this connection. He also pointed out that Longoria did not have to face the Rays’ own excellent pitching staff. So I decided to look at it more closely. The point is not to settle the Longoria versus Tulowitzki dispute. Rather, I am interested in whether individual hitters face (or do not face) particular pitchers enough that they require a “divisional” adjustment of some sort.

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The contracts that baseball players sign are some of the longest contracts in business — not just sports. When handing out nine- or ten-year deals, projecting salary inflation is critical, and yet getting an accurate forecast is nearly impossible.

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Punxsutawney Phil is due to make his appearance today. He’ll survey the ground around him, take stock of the adoring fans, and prognosticate about the weather. With how bad our weatherpeople are at long-term meteorological predictions, maybe it makes sense for us to turn to a land-beaver for our winter forecast needs.

But what about the state of the ground in baseball today?

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It is officially February when baseball news is reduced to vague rumors about teams from which Roy Oswalt and Edwin Jackson may or may not be considering one-year offers. Well, that and that Mark Teixeira saying he might bunt to beat the shift this season. Hoo boy.

There is something of interest in the Teixeira report, though. Sure, we do not know whether he is actually going to do it or not. Remember, this is the time of year when players say things like “I’m going to steal 20 bags this year” even if they have never stolen more than 10 in any season. Still, it is not a crazy idea. While sabermetric writing on the internet went through a phase of arguing that bunts are counterproductive to scoring and winning, research has progressed to show that bunts are not as bad as all that. In certain situations, they can be a good idea in terms of getting the win in a close game or simply “keeping the fielders honest” (also known as “game theory,” a term I am pretty sure Bruce Bochy uses frequently).

But what about power hitter like Teixeira? Isn’t bunting always a bad idea for them? To answer this properly would require a great deal of complex thinking and programming. For now, let’s take a simple approach by looking at some data from 2011 to see whether Teixeira is simply blowing smoke or making sense.

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Players leave money on the table every year. It’s true! Pitchers, in particular, have been signing away free agency years at below-market prices for a while now.

Consider the most recent big signing, Yu Darvish. He most likely would have made more money had he stayed in Japan for three years and come over as a free agent. Through the arbitration process in Japan, he was due around $27 million over the next three years, and his deal with the Rangers only pays him $25 million over the same time frame. Had he continued his dominance, and come over in three years, it seems likely he would have made more than $30 million over three years. He would have had the leverage of the unrestricted free agent.

But Darvish’ plight resembled that of the arbitration-eligible pitcher here in the states. He could only talk to one team, which should sound familiar. And he probably valued some non-monetary benefits that a long-term contract offered: security and the ability to compete against the best in the world. How prevalent is this sort of give-and-take in the normal process here in the states? How many pitchers have given up free agent years at below the going rate?

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This year’s Hall of Fame ballot had a very weak pool of first-year candidates. Bernie Williams was the leading vote getter with just 9.6% of the vote, and the only member to break the 5% cut off to stay on the ballot. At the same time the 14 returning candidates saw their vote total increase by an average of 7.1%, and five had increases of over 10%. Many have suggested that there is a relationship between these two facts; that is, with few good first-year candidates to vote for there were extra votes for the returning candidates.

Last year David Roher at Deadspin/Harvard Sports Analysis Collective noted that over the 2000s the average number of votes per HoF ballot was fairly constant, between 6.6 and 5.35. This would suggest that in years with strong first-year candidates there would be fewer votes for returning candidates and vice versa. I wanted to more explicitly test this relationship and see whether it extended further back than just the 2000s.

I looked at every Hall of Fame vote from 1967, when the current voting rules were put in place. Along the x-axis is the average number of first-year candidates voted for. Along the y-axis is the average change in vote share for returning candidates compared to the previous year (here an increase from 60% to 65% would be denoted by 0.05).
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Wine and cheese make for a delectable combo. But the two foods don’t age the same. Wine takes much longer to turn to vinegar than it does for your cheese to grow fuzzy green mold. That’s why wine is the one used in sayings by older men verifying their remaining virility.

Power, patience and contact are the components of a delectable (productive) hitter. And yet, like wine and cheese, it turns out that these different skills age differently. Ages 26 through 28 are often used to represent a hitter’s peak, but not all of their different faculties are at their apex in that age range. Let’s check the aging curves, once again courtesy stat guru Jeff Zimmerman.

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When Johnny says his last lines in “The Outsiders” — “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.” — there’s more than a slight touch of mortality in the moment. There might even be outright pessimism about the directive. After all, the Robert Frost poem he’s referencing finishes: “Nothing gold can stay.”

Turns out Johnny and Frost know a little something about pitchers and strikeout rates. Thanks to the inestimable Jeff Zimmerman, we have strikeout aging curves for both starters and relievers. As dawn turns to day, it seems, pitchers also lose their gold.

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