Cliff Lee and Avoiding Free Passes
Cliff Lee is having a season for the ages. His prodigious strikeout to walk ratio this year has been well documented, but it practically deserves a note after every one of his starts. I am going to bring it up again, but in my own way. I don’t particularly fancy walks as the ideal denominator in this ratio.
For one, it includes intentional walks and I don’t like that. Though it is less of an issue for starting pitchers than it is for relievers it is still a relevant distinction to make for National League pitchers who might see more intentional walks given to the hitter in front of the pitcher. Secondly, it leaves out hit batsmen, which I think should be included. After all the result is the same, a free base to the hitter. I have mentioned previously that I favor a number that I deemed “free passes” and someone else offered “net walks” which is unintentional walks and hit batsmen. Not coincidentally, that is the number used in the FIP formula and others.
After Cliff Lee’s recent 11 strikeout, no walk performance against the Yankees, I decided to see where he was currently stacking up against the history books. Now I already knew that his traditional strikeout to walk rate was among the best baseball has ever seen, a remarkable feat in and of itself. Pundits owe it to the public to discuss frequently anytime anyone in baseball manages to best an all time record. With so many years of history behind it, breaking any baseball record is a difficult task. Cliff Lee’s 15.2 strikeout to walk ratio is on that pace with the current best mark (minimum 160 innings pitched) being Bret Saberhagen’s strike-shortened 1994 season where he struck out 143 and walked 13 for an 11.0 ratio.
15.2 is a whole lot better than 11.0 but it gets even more impressive. Cliff Lee has two intentional walks and just one hit batter. By contrast, Saberhagen had no intentional walks in 1994 and plunked four batters. Utilizing net walks, Cliff Lee’s ratio increases to an overwhelming 17.1 strikeouts per free pass issued while Saberhagen drops all the way to 8.4.
Saberhagen is not the only one to experience a sharp change in ratio with this tweak in the walk number. Pedro Martinez hit 14 batters in 2000 (and 15 in 2002) and including those drops his rate from 8.9 to 6.2. That is still impressive, but is no longer one of history’s best. On the other side, Greg Maddux had 11 intentional walks (witness that pesky NL factor) and just three hit batters so his ratio jumped from 6.1 to 8.6, turning an otherwise ordinary Maddux season into the fourth best mark in baseball history.
Just in case you were wondering, the projected top spot on this revised list doesn’t change. Cliff Lee is still dominating the records, but now he is doing so by a bigger margin, a seemingly impossible accomplishment. While before there was Saberhagen at 11 and a couple other pitchers above the 9.0 threshold, take a look at the top ten when using net walks:
| Pitcher | Season | K/Net Walk |
|---|---|---|
| Cliff Lee | 2010 | 17.1 |
| Curt Schilling | 2002 | 9.0 |
| Greg Maddux | 1997 | 8.9 |
| Greg Maddux | 1996 | 8.6 |
| Bret Saberhagen | 1994 | 8.4 |
| Ben Sheets | 2004 | 7.5 |
| Greg Maddux | 1995 | 7.5 |
| Curt Schilling | 2001 | 7.3 |
| Fergie Jenkins | 1971 | 7.3 |
| Greg Maddux | 2001 | 7.2 |
Two things jump out to me. Fergie Jenkies was really ahead of his time and Cliff Lee is nearly doubling the greatest mark ever. That’s dominance on an incredible scale.
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.
Don’t forget another rather obvious thing from that list — Greg Maddux is a pitching deity.
If Cliff Lee keeps this up, Maddox may want to make a little room on that cloud.
Maybe Maddox will, but Maddux should be safe until Cliff Lee keeps it up for a half-decade or so.
Using net walks is probably more accurate than the classical method, but it should be noted that some undisclosed number of hit batsmen may be intentional. Pedro may have relished any fear his hit batsmen total generated.
Fearful or not, those guys were still standing at 1st base.
Intentional walks are still standing on first base too.
I’m not sure how much I agree with including HBP in net walks, simply because often times pitchers will intentionally hit batters or intentionally get-as-close-to-hitting-them-as-possible-and-won’t-be-too-sad-if-they-are-hit. Sometimes HBP are mistakes, but sometimes they aren’t, and the cases where they aren’t are the same as IBB, they shouldn’t be included in any metric trying to find true skill. Pedro comes up as the perfect example, sure he has a lot of Hit Batters, but I’m guessing he wanted to hit a lot of those guys, and the guys he deliberately hit shouldn’t be included.
Agree with this. The intimidation factor, and the hit batsmen that went with it, was an integral part of Pedro’s game. It wasn’t at all a reflection of weaker control.
At the same time, Maddux’s “unintentional” walks were more or less him deciding it was ok to walk a guy and pitch to a guy he knows he can get out. And that wasn’t always true for the #8 hitters. I specifically remember him issuing intentional-unintentional walks to guys like Jeff Bagwell and Barry Bonds multiple times.
The more you dig, the more you have to dig even deeper.
I remember this one time in 1999 where Maddux walked Guerrero intentionally in the first after a Vidro’s double.
It must be the only intentional non 8th batter walk from Maddux ever. He didn’t have a choice because against Guerrero, even if you try an intentional-unintentional walk, he can hit you hard.
Here’s the retrosheet : http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1999/B09180ATL1999.htm
Ha, yea that’s typical Maddux. Imagine issuing an intentional walk to put two guys on base… so you can face a #5 hitter with a .464 SLG… in the first inning. There’s a call I can’t imagine any manager making, but Maddux would.
And to add onto the above, you knew when Maddux issued a truly unintentional walk when he barked out curses after the pitch. Dude would curse REALLY loud, and I remember being a kid and my dad shaking his head because the TBS cameras kept catching the curses.
It shouldn’t matter if the HBP is intentional or not. Assuming Pedro gained meaningfully from his “intimidation” (impossible to prove or measure statistically), those gains would have showed up in the performance of the batters he faced. You still have to account for putting a runner on-base with the HBP.
In other words, just because Pedro’s HBPs provided a net benefit (debatable) that does not mean they suddenly have no cost.
I feel the same way about intentional walks. If a pitcher believes putting a runner on first base instead of pitching to him, why would that discount the value of the walk? The pitcher has decided that a guaranteed base-on-balls is better than the possibility of a big hit. It’s still a walk and it still negatively affects the game-state for the pitcher’s team.
If you want to just measure control, then fine, by all means ignore IBBs, but if you are trying to measure the value of a pitcher, HBP, walks and IBB should all be included
What was the last time the pitcher told his catcher to stick out his right hand? The IBB call comes from the bench, not the mound.
Bobby Cox always lets his veteran pitchers make the call if they wish. And it wasn’t just Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz who were afforded the luxury.
Really? I’d never heard of that before. I’m used to stuff like Girardi overriding Rivera and ordering him to put Longoria on.
For one thing, it’s been shown that IBBs lead to fewer runs than uBBs. Secondly, they aren’t indicative in the least of a pitcher’s control.
@Kevin, yea but I mean most pitchers don’t WANT to make the call it seems, so Cox ends up making most of the calls anyway. Anecdotally, Maddux and Glavine were the only ones where they made the call as much as he did.
Smoltz never seemed to ever want to IBB someone short of Bonds.
Lol, the one thing everyone in the whole universe can agree on: Greg Maddux is awesome.
Ben Sheets 🙂
I generally agree with using the net walks here, but intentional walks are a function of the pitcher letting men get on base. You never see an intentional walk with the bases empty, and if you’re facing a hitter like Pujols in a precarious situation you may unintentionally intentionally walk him – that would be included in the net walk number. So since they are a function of the pitcher’s performance, maybe it makes sense to leave them in. I don’t know. Just a thought.
What Lee’s doing is incredible, but it’s important to note that K/9 minus BB/9 is what we should be looking at not, K/BB.
Yes, the ratio really skews things, particularly when you get to such low denominators as these guys are. Which is why doubling the record wouldn’t really be such an amazing feat to me, we might be talking a difference of I don’t know 4 walks by the end of a season. Its cool, and it shows a great season, but the difference in real value is nothing like 2x.
Pitcher A = 200 K, 25 BB
Pitcher B = 110 K, 10 BB
A Ratio = 8.0 K/BB
B Ratio = 11.0 K/BB
Obviously, you’d rather have Pitcher A. Sure, 15 more times he issues a free pass … but 90 more times he gets an out without a ball in play.
It’s a great point to bring up, because often we just hear a stat and go ga-ga over it.
The most impressive thing about Lee is that he’s just not a “control guy”, but he’s 8th in the AL in K’s. So, he doesn;t walk a lot of guys (duh), but he also K’s a bunch.
This is where I think taking an “average” base run value for walks and treating it as gospel to all situations, needs to be tempered. There are plenty of times (over the course of a season, not in a single game) where a walk isn’t as devestating as one might think.
The stat only works as super impressive if the pitcher has BOTH a high #of K’s and a very low # of walks, and Lee fits that criteria, as do most of the other greats mentioned in this thread.
Good stuff fellas.
Mostly agree on subtraction instead of division (and I think it should be K%-BB%, but that’s another argument), but that breaks down at the extremes just as much as K/BB does. Is the guy who has a 12 K/9 and a 6 BB/9 really the same as the guy who is 7 and 1? I realize for this type of exercise one needs a joint number, but generally I don’t like aggregating a player’s K and BB rates. Just show me both.
Quite true. Its just anytime you do some sort of “math” to a statistic you’re losing information. Which is why we need to look at several stats all at once.
Which is why Lee doubles Schilling here, but
Schilling FIP (2002): 2.40
Lee FIP (2010): 2.31
It’s hard sussing out the difference between intentional HBPs and just the random loss of control. A good chunk of Pedro’s HBPs were clearly intentional, as were some of Maddux’s HBPs. Though of course no hitter feared getting plunked by Maddux’s 90-MPH fastball, so often they looked done more for the benefit of his own team’s hitters.
Maybe we should regress someone’s HBP rate toward the norm for someone with their kind of BB rate, if we assume they are reasonable proxies for the same skill, that being control.
I don’t know about that. Is getting hit by young Pedro’s 98 mph heat really THAT much more painful than young Maddux’s 92 mph heat?
I seriously doubt it. I’d be more worried about pissing someone off that has good enough control to hit me wherever he wanted to. Make him mad enough and you could lose an ear, break your wrist, not sit comfortably for a month, etc.
Therein lies the basis for the arguement that “Roger Clemens hit what he aims at”.
And … a pitcher’s claim of “it got away” or “it slipped” is baseball code for “I nailed that bastard didn’t I? Yuk Yuk Yuk”
Why is Adam Wainwright the leader in WAR at Baseball-reference (Halladay 4th), but at FG Halladay leads by a wide margin?
Usage of ERA instead of FIP?
Likewise Jared Weaver is the AL WAR leader, and at FG Lee leads by a big margin.
I think b-r uses Rally’s WAR for pitchers, which is based off of RA (with some adjustments)… but don’t hold me to that.
Yes, Fangraphs uses FIP adjusted for role while B-R uses RA adjusted for defense, park, strength of opponents (including league) and role.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/glossary/#winvalues
http://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/6063
They both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Thanks guys.