Checking on the Pitchers’ Bats
With the second go-round of interleague play looming and roughly 40% of the season done, now seems like a good time to check in on how well pitchers are hitting. Although it’s usually not given too much thought, having a group of starting pitchers who are capable of putting bat to baseball outside of just laying down the sacrifice bunt can make a big difference. Let’s take a look at which National League teams’s hitters are better at being really bad hitters through yesterday’s games:
TM. PA. AVG.. OBP.. SLG.. wOBA wRC+ RAAP
ARI 160 0.162 0.208 0.243 0.206 +21 +6.8
LAN 155 0.162 0.232 0.208 0.206 +24 +6.6
HOU 139 0.176 0.210 0.227 0.199 +16 +5.1
FLA 155 0.165 0.221 0.181 0.190 .+9 +4.4
MIL 160 0.157 0.186 0.229 0.187 .+9 +4.2
CIN 156 0.161 0.173 0.219 0.174 .-2 +2.3
SFN 162 0.138 0.179 0.196 0.172 .-2 +2.1
PHI 169 0.158 0.185 0.178 0.165 -10 +1.2
CHN 140 0.144 0.164 0.192 0.161 -13 +0.5
WAS 155 0.126 0.165 0.134 0.142 -20 -2.0
COL 162 0.131 0.137 0.168 0.135 -30 -3.1
STL 164 0.113 0.143 0.141 0.132 -26 -3.6
ATL 150 0.096 0.137 0.120 0.123 -33 -4.4
SDN 138 0.105 0.118 0.137 0.115 -31 -5.0
NYN 153 0.087 0.120 0.126 0.114 -38 -5.7
PIT 154 0.083 0.109 0.098 0.097 -53 -8.0
AVG 155 0.135 0.168 0.175 0.157 -11 +0.0
The Dodgers have been powered so far by Chad Billingsley’s fantastic 8/26 line, including three doubles, a homer, and three walks. Barry Enright and Zach Duke, although they only have 21 combined PAs, have slugged three homers for Arizona. Zack Greinke has a homer for Milwaukee; Yovani Gallardo and Randy Wolf also have on-base percentages above .250. Houston has been powered by J.A. Happ’s .304/.360/.487 line, his .370 wOBA second only to Billingsley’s .401. Other notables include the ever-present Carlos Zambrano (.363 wOBA), Clayton Kershaw (.313 OBP), and Jason Hammel (.200 wOBA, but a homer against Greinke).
The bottom of the leaderboard presents some pretty hilarious lines, chief among them that of baseball’s best pitcher to date: Roy Halladay. Halladay has only two hits and a walk to go with 19 strikeouts in 44 plate appearances, good for a .069 wOBA. Remarkably enough, though, he has scored two runs already this year. Other oh-fer kings include Jhoulys Chacin (.093 wOBA), Kevin Correia (.066 wOBA), Charlie Morton (.047 wOBA), and Kyle Lohse (.084 wOBA). Most of these guys have pitched well this season, but it really should be noted that their poor performance at the plate does hurt the team a bit. Halladay, for example, will likely be a full win below the major league average by the time the season is over. Not that I wouldn’t take him, but that does sharply reduce his value to a National League club.
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Chacin knocked a single yesterday.
Halladay does lead all players in sacrifice bunts this season…
He has a 26.7% LD rate and .125 BABIP… clearly getting some rotten luck haha
Fun excercise: I’m looking for pitchers who’ve out-hit their opponents.
Mike Leake has hit .315/.367/.356/.723 thus far in his big league career (87 PA’s). Not quite as good as batters have hit off him: .285/.343/.438/.781
Yovani Gallardo has hit .210/.249/.390/.639 (227 PA’s). Batting against: .242/.318/.378/.696. Again, close but not quite.
Chad Billingsley:
He’s hit .308/.379/.538
Opponents have hit: .280/.355/.403
Eh, I was using career stats, and trying to limit to a decent sample size.
In which case Billinglsey is a much-less-interesting .146/.203/.195/.398 vs .251/.332/.372/.704.
oh … nm then. My bad.
Micah Owings, the Babe, and maybe Don Newcombe.
I really doubt Micah Owings has outhit his opponents.
Man … Halladay’s been so bad (and has had enough PA’s) that it is almost starting to be significant.
He’s managed to rack up -.8 WAR to this point.
For example even within the Phillies. Halladay’s total WAR (Pitching+Hitting) is 3.2 and Hamels total is 3.2 as well due to his being significantly less bad with the bat.
For fringe type pitchers this could actually make a relatively significant difference. If you have say 2 pitching WAR on the season having a -.5 batting WAR vs -2 would greatly affect your overall value as a player.
So that’s why the Dodgers have been drafting so many two way players!!
Market deficiencies for the win!!!
WAR for pitchers in inherently flawed because it doesn’t have a suitable positional adjustment for pitchers. It would be cool if fangraphs could somehow integrate the wRC+ from a pitcher in the national league and incorporate into the pitchers overall WAR, and possibly use TZ for fielding as well
I like that idea. Position players overall value is based off of their overall production, but pitchers value really doesn’t.
If Halladay continues to be so inept with the bat this year he’s likely to be a -2 WAR offensive player, which in the grand scheme of things is fairly significant.
Having said that, I think the biggest differences would be in those kind of marginal innings eater types (ie Livan Hernandez).
This is strange. Why does it show Halladay’s batting WAR as being -0.2 this morning?
Note on my team: The Nationals have been SABRing it up with an 8-hole pitcher the past few games…and are undefeated in that time.
They have one true hitting pitcher (Marquis), a good bunter with a little hitting (Hernandez), a good bunter who can’t hit (Zimmermann), and two terrible hitters who can still make power-contact right at outfielders (Gorzelanny and Lannan).
Charlie Morton really is attempting to emulate all parts of Roy Halladay’s game, it seems.
I’ve mentioned this before in comments, but J sanchez is having some success with the bat this year. .231/.259/.385 wOBA .282, suprising for a guy that never could hit in the past
In a future post, you might also look at how each NL team’s pitching staff is hitting versus how the opposing pitchers are hitting against them (what’s the relative advantage or disadvantage each NL team enjoys when its pitchers hit versus when its pitchers face the opposition’s pitchers?).
Here are some obscure stats regarding production from the #9 spot in the batting order in 2011 (yes, NL pitchers occasionally bat 8th):
Tampa Bay’s #9 hitters (AVG/OBP/SLG .203/.264/.278) have been outproduced by Cincinnati’s (.216/.257/.310) and Houston’s (.214/.279/.304).
Houston’s (.279) and Washington’s (.271) #9 hitters reach base more often than do the Angels’ (.267) or Rays’ (.264).
Mets’ pitchers have been hit harder by #9 hitters than have Yankees’ pitchers (.239/.291/.275 vs .185/.263/.264).
Dodgers’ #9 hitters (18.9% K rate) have struck out less frequently than the #9 hitters of 6 AL teams (BOS 19.2%, BAL 19.8%, TBR 20.7%, TOR 22.9%, DET 25.2%, LAA 25.4%).
The team that has allowed the most HRs to #9 hitters is an NL club – Houston with 9 HR surrendered.
The issue probably isn’t so much pitchers batting eighth, it’s pinch-hitters and double-switchers batting ninth in later innings.
For instance, one of the home runs the Astros gave up to the 9 spot was to Xavier Paul on Wednesday, when he stayed in after pinch-hitting. Not that giving up a home run to Paul is that much less embarrassing.
(This is just the one I remember; haven’t done a search or anything.)
Yeah, the breakdown of the 9 HRs vs HOU is 4 by Ps, 4 by PHs, and 1 by a RF that had PH a few innings earlier (Paul). I recall seeing a comment that the Astros had allowed half of the HRs hit by P in 2011 after they allowed their 4th to a P – that’s probably not true anymore as I’ve seen a few hit since that time.
This is but one of the many reasons why the effect of having pitchers hit has been vastly overstated by AL fanboys.
I’m not sure if anyone’s done this sort of analysis before, but it would be interesting to a see a breakdown of AL vs NL production by batting order spot for all NL-park interleague games. Like you probably, I’m thinking the #9 spot production would be practically equivalent between the AL and NL #9 hitters in those NL park games, particularly given that 35% to 50% of the plate appearances in the pitcher’s spot in the batting order are taken by non-pitchers in the modern game.
I’m always surprised that Tim Hudson isn’t a better hitting pitcher. Didn’t he crush the ball in college? I know he spent a long time in the AL, but still.
His swing in college was a classic aluminum bat swing. He never worked on it for many years as he played in the AL and has never really tried changing it when he got on the Braves. Looking at him now, you would imagine he had never hit above high school before.
I was a great hitter when I was a pitcher.
Now I suck at both.
We need Pitcher UZR.
Pitcher UZR would be difficult because pitchers sometimes need to NOT touch the ball to ensure it goes to the fielder- and I believe that would hurt their “Zone Rating”
Why? We all know Mark Buehrle will just lead all pitchers until he retires.
Based on stats like there, is there really any argument about what to do with the DH if there is massive realignment?
Based on stats like these*
Maybe Halladay is so bad with the bat is because he’s almost always winning already so team strategy says Halladay go up there and swing at the first 3 pitches so that you can get back out there on the mound without having to run the bases or get tired.
I’d figure guys with higher ERA’s would care more about their hitting.
The awful hitting pitchers listed above are all actually pitching quite well this year so maybe it is more team practice.
excellent name. you must be a fellow Atlantic Canadian.
nobody’s worse than Daniel Cabrera though…
0-26, 2 BB, 24 K
.000/.103/.000
I have often pondered why bad hitting is not part of an NL pitchers compensation more. It has a tangible affect on the teams winning and losing. I say this as a rabid NL fan who finds the DH to be extremely intellectually boring. Nonetheless, NL teams should pay significantly less for pitchers that can’t hit, but it seems to me they rarely do. I guess they are afraid of all the best pitching talent being signed by the AL. Nonetheless, the failure to penalize pitchers for their bats causes the AL to have more talent anyway since NL is overpaying for the true value of the pitcher to the club. This drains resources from other areas leading to an overall less talent per dollar on an NL team.
I suggest: 1) NL teams actually have pitchers take batting practice and do so as much as other players. Sure they can get injured, but so be it. The offensive help will make up for it. 2) NL teams should only sign free agent pitchers that can hit unless the pitcher is willing to take a hit financially based on his bat. This will lower the pool of available teams willing to bid on any one free agent bad hitting pitchers services which will drive down some pitching salaries to the point where NL teams will be able to get fair value for some guys. 3) Concentrate on pitchers in the draft more if your an NL team because almost all guys brought up are worth the money prior to free agency.
Note: relief pitchers rarely bat in the NL, so I think the NL should on average sign much better relievers in free agency than the AL and use them much more often. Pinch hitters overcome a much of the lack of hitting by NL pitchers, so bullpens and benches are far more important in the NL.
I don’t understand where these names comes from: LAN, SDN, and NYN…
LAN, SDN and NYN are such because Los Angeles, San Diego and New York dont break down into 3 letter initialisms easily. Its the same deal with airport codes and LAX. Obviously the N part of LAN and NYN make sense to designate them from their AL counterparts, but SDN and SFN are pretty weird.
LAN makes some sense, but your explanation is why most sites use
“LAD” and “NYM” I think. Following this method, SDP would make sense as well.
I hit like a pitcher this year