JABO: A Spring Training Stat That Might Matter

Because there’s a lot of noise, we tend to look past spring training stats. But recent work suggests that using spring training stats can improve projections, and our own Mike Podhorzer worked with Matt Swartz to show that a pitcher’s strikeouts and walks in the spring are meaningful results.

In other words, if we use our small-sample tools, maybe Spring Training really is a little bit like September: expanded rosters, some meaningless games, but still baseball, being played at a high level. The veterans usually play veterans early in the game, and the minor leaguers don’t get the same number of innings or plate appearances to be grouped with the veterans in any statistical mining we might do.

So, that said, let’s look at the starting pitchers, and their strikeouts. These strikeout rates are basically half-way to the stabilization point — the point at which they represent more signal than noise — and they’ve been (mostly) facing the veterans before they leave early, along the right field line.

Read the rest on Just a Bit Outside.





With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.

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Jorge Fabregas
8 years ago

Seems like you could get percentages by exporting a CSV from this page:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2015-spring-training-pitching.shtml

and then dividing Ks by batters faced (BF).