This will be the 9th and final question I will ask. And I think it’s the toughest one. But, you guys keep surprising me, so, let’s get into it.
The question relates to how you see pitchers and the impact of their fielders. We have two pitchers, let’s call them Stephen Strasburg and Adam Wainwright. And they are pitching in the same game.
Strasburg pitches a complete game, striking out 13, without walking anyone, or allowing any extra base hits. But he does allow 10 singles, or at least, he and his fielders allow 10 singles, and that leads to 2 runs.
Wainwright also pitches a complete game, he also doesn’t walk anyone, but he only strikes out 4. He only allows 7 singles, or at least, he and his fielders allow 7 singles, and that leads to only 1 run.
The only thing you know is what I’ve told you. If you wish to infer more, like perhaps the Cardinals fielders helped Adam more than the Nationals fielders helped Stephen, go ahead. If you wish to infer that Wainwright allowed softer hit balls than Strasburg, you can do that if you want. You decide how to interpret the information I’ve given you.
The question:
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I voted Strasburg here, but there’s a less-extreme case where I would’ve gone the other way. There is almost certainly a lot of skill involved in preventing hits, it’s just hard to measure. This seems fundamentally different to me than the questions about context neutrality.
I also retract my earlier complaint, some of these more recent ones have been non-trivial decisions.
BipMember since 2016
10 years ago
This one is a no-brainer to me. In a sample this small, you don’t even have to rely on the fielders to explain the difference. Strasburg could very easily have gotten unluckier in terms of where those hits were placed. Also, I think the outcome of an individual plate appearance obviously has a lot to do with the batter. Two pitchers can pitch identical games, but one of them can have his pitches squared up better, simply because the batter has some control over whether he squares up a ball. Over season-long samples, we don’t expect this effect to really come out, unless a guy faces a notably higher quality of competition, but in a game it certainly can.
Now, knowing that Strasburg has shown that he might be more hittable than his stuff suggests sort of biases me the other way, to saying that he deserves it, but I am purposely recognizing and ignoring that bias.
The other thing about hits, particularly singles, is that there is a weird exit-velocity paradox with them. There is a point where, if a ball is hit somewhat high, there is a point where it actually is beneficial to the batter to be hit softer. It’s basically the bloop singles. These happen enough that they show up in batted ball density graphs that account for exit velocity. Are some pitchers more susceptible to bloop hits? Is Strasburg one of them, where despite being good at suppressing exit velocity, he gives up too many singles? It’s an aside since that is not detectable in one game.
I voted for Strasburg for the same reason, because from the information given it appears more likely that Strasburg did his job better but got unlucky. To me, the key item in this example is the level of information available.
For example, if all we had was runs allowed, you’d have to go Wainright. With the basic boxscore info here, I put Strasburg ahead (leaning on DIPS theory as part of the justification). If we had more detailed batted-ball information, that could change the picture further, and if we had play-by-play defensive metrics we could possibly glean more information that would change this decision – all of which would need to be tied to some framework of how much of these items were under the pitcher’s influence.
Which leads me to your point about the bloop hits. Anecdotally, I’d guess that pitchers don’t have differences in skill in preventing bloop hits, but some hitters may be more pre-disposed to getting them if they are more prone to hit with topspin and spray the ball around. But without a large enough (yet) body of research on this, all I can make is a conjecture. It wouldn’t be enough yet to even begin to develop a framework to possibly account for this.
The Dude of NY
10 years ago
I think this question exemplifies why I find WAR more of a starting point than the finishing point in analyzing a player. While K-BB% is one of the best indicators of future success, some pitchers are really bad contact managers (I’m looking at you, Ian Kennedy). Knowing nothing else about the situation, I reluctantly picked Strasburg.
Big Daddy V
10 years ago
Pitchers getting weak contact is real, whether people want to believe in it or not.
This was tough but I did some math and assuming no double plays occurred Stras would have a .417 BABIP vs .233 for Wainwright. I feel both (especially the .417) are unsustainable even if Wainwright did get weaker contact the gap wouldn’t be that large over a bigger sample. Wainwright would be K’ing only 12% compared to Strasburg’s 35% so I’d take Stras but if the gap was smaller I might go Wainwright because of weak contact but the gap here is just way too large.
Also in this case if they faced the same number of batters as before if Wainwright had say a .270 BABIP he would give up 8.1 hits, if we bring Strasburg down to just .330 he would give up 7.9 hits.
TangotigerMember since 2016
10 years ago
Great stuff guys. And please keep commenting. As much as I try to write the questions to try to infer what you are thinking, I still want to see your thought process laid out anyway.
Phillies113
10 years ago
This one was definitely tough! But I also leaned Strasburg. The strikeouts gave him the advantage, in my opinion. As mentioned previously, the difference in runs allowed could be due to bad luck, or bad defense, or both.
MooserMember since 2020
10 years ago
I need to know the details about the hits. Were they soft grounders, or line drives. Were the fielders gold glovers or was were they well below average.
Cory Settoon
10 years ago
I vote Stras. Maybe he got bit by the babip bug.
msnyderMember since 2016
10 years ago
I voted Strasburg. I can’t credit Wainwright for inducing weaker contact when we don’t actually know that to be the case.
mlucey
10 years ago
I went with the win. Same number of outs and walks and less hits and runs allowed. Wainwright was better in every category except the way an out occurred. Maybe if Strasburg could pitch to contact better he would not have needed to strike as many people out by pitching out of so many jams.
Wainwright was so effective he was getting soft contact and did not need to strike people out to win.
Is a better proxy for effective pitching strike outs or singles?
If it was added to the scenario that the average exit velocity of hitter’s against Wainwright was 20 mph higher than the average exit velocity of hitter’s against Strasburg–but nothing else was altered in the scenario–then would you make the same vote?
How do you know Wainwright was getting soft contact? It’s a completely made up stat line.
Every year there are hundreds of hard hit balls that are turned into outs. And hundreds of softly hit balls that are turned into singles.
We know nothing about the relative contact these two pitchers allowed in this thought experiment.
mlucey
10 years ago
This is an argument for a better WAR. This game is played by humans and some just have that “it” that pushes them to win regardless of how they are doing on a given day. Jordan had it, Russell had it, I’d say Ortiz has it. In this case Wainwright had it in this game. Some are just lovable losers.
Your addition of velocity is irrelevant. If Wainwright is having success getting people out, why should he be penalized for the style of success? The 2 commodities in baseball are outs and runs, analytic’s needs to account for success.
I only brought up velocity because you said, “Wainwright was… getting soft contact.” If that is irrelevant then that is fine. Leaving aside the fact that the level of contact, hard or soft, is not stated in the prompt. (In summary, you invented a level of contact (i.e., velocity) then I commented on your assumption of the velocity then you said my “addition” of velocity is irrelevant.)
Regardless, I think your level of analysis is more than enough to enjoy and evaluate the game. It provides a great backbone. But I think most people reading here want deeper analysis. An attempt at it won’t hurt Wainwright’s success on the field in any way. And I hope it doesn’t hurt your enjoyment of watching his success on the field either.
The key is to determine how much to attribute to Wainwright and how much to his fielders.
If we don’t expect a pitcher, even on his best day, to have a true talent BABIP of .250, and we observe his team with him on the mound with a .200 BABIP, are we necessarily going to attribute that result 100% to the pitcher and 0% to his fielders?
That’s what the discussion is about, or should be. Just because Wainwright was on the mound when 7 singles got hit doesn’t mean that he did it all on his own, and his fielders were just bystanders.
Or maybe they were because he was that incredible that day. Since we don’t know, we have to hedge our bets and split the difference, and presume that the performance was because of both Wainwright AND the Cards fielders.
All True Outcomes
10 years ago
If Wainwright used fewer pitches to get the job done, I’d take him over Strasburg. Efficiency has short and long term benefits.
johnforthegiants
10 years ago
I voted for Wainwright. Strasburg has been phenomenally, really phenomenally bad in his career in terms of quality of contact in high-leverage situations (in LL/ML/ML, his LD% is 22.9/20.6/27.1 and his Hard% is 28.3/28.5/37.2). The chi-square value for LL/ML vs. HL is 7.86 (p<.01), so such a wildly skewed sample would occur due to chance less than 1/100 times, so statisticians would take this to be statistically significant, that is, there is statistical evidence for believing that Strasburg consistently does worse in HL situations in terms of quality of contact, and this is not just an accident. This is presumably due to some psychological reaction to being in such situations (aka choking), or there may be some other explanation, but there is clear statistical reason to believe that this is real. This radical difference is also reflected in other stats (wOBA=277/274/345, SLG=347/340/459, AVG=225/216/291), and his K% is essentially the same according to leverage (30.2/27.3/29.6). In a complete game in which the final score is 2-1 and he gives up 10 singles, Strasburg undoubtedly had a huge number of HL situations, and given his repeatable very high propensity to give up solid contact in such situations, the natural assumption is that he was incredibly fortunate (either through sequencing, great fielding, or general luck) to give up only two runs. 27.1+37.1=64.2 for LD%+Hard% is higher than any batter other than Martinez, Davis, Goldschmidt, Trout, Cabrera, Belt, Freeman, Howard, and Carpenter; it's higher than Harper. Wainwright on the other hand has been slightly better in HL situations than LL/ML situations, although the difference is not statistically significant. Especially if he only gave up 7 singles, so that he has fewer HL situations, and his LD/Hard%s are only 18.5% and 23.5%, only giving up one run does not seem to be nearly as statistically unlikely.
You critically misinterpreted the question. I think Tango did it a disservice by using real names. The actual abilities of Wainwright and Strasburg are irrelevant. Look at the stat lines.
I voted Strasburg here, but there’s a less-extreme case where I would’ve gone the other way. There is almost certainly a lot of skill involved in preventing hits, it’s just hard to measure. This seems fundamentally different to me than the questions about context neutrality.
I also retract my earlier complaint, some of these more recent ones have been non-trivial decisions.
This one is a no-brainer to me. In a sample this small, you don’t even have to rely on the fielders to explain the difference. Strasburg could very easily have gotten unluckier in terms of where those hits were placed. Also, I think the outcome of an individual plate appearance obviously has a lot to do with the batter. Two pitchers can pitch identical games, but one of them can have his pitches squared up better, simply because the batter has some control over whether he squares up a ball. Over season-long samples, we don’t expect this effect to really come out, unless a guy faces a notably higher quality of competition, but in a game it certainly can.
Now, knowing that Strasburg has shown that he might be more hittable than his stuff suggests sort of biases me the other way, to saying that he deserves it, but I am purposely recognizing and ignoring that bias.
The other thing about hits, particularly singles, is that there is a weird exit-velocity paradox with them. There is a point where, if a ball is hit somewhat high, there is a point where it actually is beneficial to the batter to be hit softer. It’s basically the bloop singles. These happen enough that they show up in batted ball density graphs that account for exit velocity. Are some pitchers more susceptible to bloop hits? Is Strasburg one of them, where despite being good at suppressing exit velocity, he gives up too many singles? It’s an aside since that is not detectable in one game.
I voted for Strasburg for the same reason, because from the information given it appears more likely that Strasburg did his job better but got unlucky. To me, the key item in this example is the level of information available.
For example, if all we had was runs allowed, you’d have to go Wainright. With the basic boxscore info here, I put Strasburg ahead (leaning on DIPS theory as part of the justification). If we had more detailed batted-ball information, that could change the picture further, and if we had play-by-play defensive metrics we could possibly glean more information that would change this decision – all of which would need to be tied to some framework of how much of these items were under the pitcher’s influence.
Which leads me to your point about the bloop hits. Anecdotally, I’d guess that pitchers don’t have differences in skill in preventing bloop hits, but some hitters may be more pre-disposed to getting them if they are more prone to hit with topspin and spray the ball around. But without a large enough (yet) body of research on this, all I can make is a conjecture. It wouldn’t be enough yet to even begin to develop a framework to possibly account for this.
I think this question exemplifies why I find WAR more of a starting point than the finishing point in analyzing a player. While K-BB% is one of the best indicators of future success, some pitchers are really bad contact managers (I’m looking at you, Ian Kennedy). Knowing nothing else about the situation, I reluctantly picked Strasburg.
Pitchers getting weak contact is real, whether people want to believe in it or not.
The question is, though, if 7 singles versus 10 singles can speak to it. And, if so, how much.
Well-said.
This was tough but I did some math and assuming no double plays occurred Stras would have a .417 BABIP vs .233 for Wainwright. I feel both (especially the .417) are unsustainable even if Wainwright did get weaker contact the gap wouldn’t be that large over a bigger sample. Wainwright would be K’ing only 12% compared to Strasburg’s 35% so I’d take Stras but if the gap was smaller I might go Wainwright because of weak contact but the gap here is just way too large.
Also in this case if they faced the same number of batters as before if Wainwright had say a .270 BABIP he would give up 8.1 hits, if we bring Strasburg down to just .330 he would give up 7.9 hits.
Great stuff guys. And please keep commenting. As much as I try to write the questions to try to infer what you are thinking, I still want to see your thought process laid out anyway.
This one was definitely tough! But I also leaned Strasburg. The strikeouts gave him the advantage, in my opinion. As mentioned previously, the difference in runs allowed could be due to bad luck, or bad defense, or both.
I need to know the details about the hits. Were they soft grounders, or line drives. Were the fielders gold glovers or was were they well below average.
I vote Stras. Maybe he got bit by the babip bug.
I voted Strasburg. I can’t credit Wainwright for inducing weaker contact when we don’t actually know that to be the case.
I went with the win. Same number of outs and walks and less hits and runs allowed. Wainwright was better in every category except the way an out occurred. Maybe if Strasburg could pitch to contact better he would not have needed to strike as many people out by pitching out of so many jams.
Wainwright was so effective he was getting soft contact and did not need to strike people out to win.
Is a better proxy for effective pitching strike outs or singles?
If it was added to the scenario that the average exit velocity of hitter’s against Wainwright was 20 mph higher than the average exit velocity of hitter’s against Strasburg–but nothing else was altered in the scenario–then would you make the same vote?
How do you know Wainwright was getting soft contact? It’s a completely made up stat line.
Every year there are hundreds of hard hit balls that are turned into outs. And hundreds of softly hit balls that are turned into singles.
We know nothing about the relative contact these two pitchers allowed in this thought experiment.
This is an argument for a better WAR. This game is played by humans and some just have that “it” that pushes them to win regardless of how they are doing on a given day. Jordan had it, Russell had it, I’d say Ortiz has it. In this case Wainwright had it in this game. Some are just lovable losers.
Your addition of velocity is irrelevant. If Wainwright is having success getting people out, why should he be penalized for the style of success? The 2 commodities in baseball are outs and runs, analytic’s needs to account for success.
I only brought up velocity because you said, “Wainwright was… getting soft contact.” If that is irrelevant then that is fine. Leaving aside the fact that the level of contact, hard or soft, is not stated in the prompt. (In summary, you invented a level of contact (i.e., velocity) then I commented on your assumption of the velocity then you said my “addition” of velocity is irrelevant.)
Regardless, I think your level of analysis is more than enough to enjoy and evaluate the game. It provides a great backbone. But I think most people reading here want deeper analysis. An attempt at it won’t hurt Wainwright’s success on the field in any way. And I hope it doesn’t hurt your enjoyment of watching his success on the field either.
The key is to determine how much to attribute to Wainwright and how much to his fielders.
If we don’t expect a pitcher, even on his best day, to have a true talent BABIP of .250, and we observe his team with him on the mound with a .200 BABIP, are we necessarily going to attribute that result 100% to the pitcher and 0% to his fielders?
That’s what the discussion is about, or should be. Just because Wainwright was on the mound when 7 singles got hit doesn’t mean that he did it all on his own, and his fielders were just bystanders.
Or maybe they were because he was that incredible that day. Since we don’t know, we have to hedge our bets and split the difference, and presume that the performance was because of both Wainwright AND the Cards fielders.
If Wainwright used fewer pitches to get the job done, I’d take him over Strasburg. Efficiency has short and long term benefits.
I voted for Wainwright. Strasburg has been phenomenally, really phenomenally bad in his career in terms of quality of contact in high-leverage situations (in LL/ML/ML, his LD% is 22.9/20.6/27.1 and his Hard% is 28.3/28.5/37.2). The chi-square value for LL/ML vs. HL is 7.86 (p<.01), so such a wildly skewed sample would occur due to chance less than 1/100 times, so statisticians would take this to be statistically significant, that is, there is statistical evidence for believing that Strasburg consistently does worse in HL situations in terms of quality of contact, and this is not just an accident. This is presumably due to some psychological reaction to being in such situations (aka choking), or there may be some other explanation, but there is clear statistical reason to believe that this is real. This radical difference is also reflected in other stats (wOBA=277/274/345, SLG=347/340/459, AVG=225/216/291), and his K% is essentially the same according to leverage (30.2/27.3/29.6). In a complete game in which the final score is 2-1 and he gives up 10 singles, Strasburg undoubtedly had a huge number of HL situations, and given his repeatable very high propensity to give up solid contact in such situations, the natural assumption is that he was incredibly fortunate (either through sequencing, great fielding, or general luck) to give up only two runs. 27.1+37.1=64.2 for LD%+Hard% is higher than any batter other than Martinez, Davis, Goldschmidt, Trout, Cabrera, Belt, Freeman, Howard, and Carpenter; it's higher than Harper. Wainwright on the other hand has been slightly better in HL situations than LL/ML situations, although the difference is not statistically significant. Especially if he only gave up 7 singles, so that he has fewer HL situations, and his LD/Hard%s are only 18.5% and 23.5%, only giving up one run does not seem to be nearly as statistically unlikely.
You critically misinterpreted the question. I think Tango did it a disservice by using real names. The actual abilities of Wainwright and Strasburg are irrelevant. Look at the stat lines.