R.A. Dickey and Facing the Enemy

Not all that long ago, I wrote about Gio Gonzalez striking out a ton of opposing pitchers. Though Gonzalez set a modern-day record, the achievement itself was not entirely surprising: Gonzalez is a durable pitcher who gets a lot of strikeouts, and pitchers strike out a lot as batters. This is because pitchers are by and large terrible batters, dragging down the offensive numbers of the National League. What was more surprising, to me, was something I noticed about R.A. Dickey, which I included in the post as a note.

Dickey is a knuckleballer, and the league’s only knuckleballer worth a damn. He became a regular with the Mets in 2010, and as a Met, he threw more than 600 innings. Over that span, Dickey faced 2,344 non-pitchers, and he struck out 19% of them, or at least 19% of the guys who didn’t sac bunt. Over the same span, Dickey faced 172 pitchers, and he struck out 17% of them, or at least 17% of the guys who didn’t sac bunt. In other words: with the Mets, R.A. Dickey struck out a lower rate of pitchers than position players.

That’s weird. National League starting pitchers average about 18% strikeouts. However, at the plate, they average about 38% strikeouts, so basically pitchers strike out twice as often as position players. Dickey has demonstrated some strikeout ability, and he’s not by any means a conventional pitcher, what with the knuckler and all. Intuitively, you’d think pitchers would have more trouble hitting Dickey, not less. At least, you wouldn’t expect the strikeout rates we observe. It’s curious that pitchers have made contact against R.A. Dickey, and I thought it worth an examination.

We’ll begin with the images I find to be the least helpful. Here’s the location of all of Dickey’s pitches to non-pitchers between 2010-2012:

And here are Dickey’s pitches to pitchers between 2010-2012:

It’s hard to make sense of those images by eye-balling them. Thankfully there’s more substance in some information to follow. Let’s look now at Dickey’s first pitches to non-pitchers between 2010-2012:

And, Dickey’s first pitches to pitchers between 2010-2012:

Here, it seems like there’s some clustering in and around the zone. It seems like Dickey has been more aggressive coming after opposing pitchers, and further data bears that out.

The most obvious thing to look at is Dickey’s pitch mix. Dickey essentially throws a fastball and a knuckleball. He actually throws a few different knuckleballs, which is awesome, but for our purposes we’re sticking with the binary classification. There’s no need to break things down further. Between 2010-2012, when facing non-pitchers, Dickey threw 17% fastballs and 83% knuckleballs, according to PITCHf/x. However, between 2010-2012, when facing pitchers, Dickey threw 45% fastballs and 55% knuckleballs, according to PITCHf/x. That is…that is substantial.

I came upon an old post by Jeremy Greenhouse at the Baseball Analysts. Greenhouse was analyzing pitchers pitching to pitchers in September 2010, and what he found was that less than 5% of pitchers throw more fastballs to pitchers than to non-pitchers. Most pitchers feed other pitchers offspeed stuff, in an effort to confuse them since pitchers suck. Dickey is an exception, to an exceptional degree. He doesn’t just throw more fastballs to pitchers — he throws way more fastballs to pitchers.

The difference is even more stark if we look at the first pitches of plate appearances. Against non-pitchers, Dickey began plate appearances with 19% fastballs and 81% knuckleballs. Against pitchers, Dickey began plate appearances with 70% fastballs and 30% knuckleballs. Dickey was relatively aggressive with the enemy, coming right after him and throwing a lot of heaters. Even though Dickey had a world-beating knuckleball in his back pocket, he didn’t use it so much to try to embarrass the other arm.

It’s time now to look at some pitch results in tables. These should be fairly self-explanatory:

Against non-pitchers

Fastballs	Ball	26%
	Called Strike	36%
	Foul	14%
	Swinging Strike	3%
	In Play	21%
	Swing	38%
	Contact	91%
Knucklers	Ball	34%
	Called Strike	15%
	Foul	20%
	Swinging Strike	11%
	In Play	20%
	Swing	51%
	Contact	78%
Overall	Ball	33%
	Called Strike	18%
	Foul	19%
	Swinging Strike	10%
	In Play	20%
	Swing	49%
	Contact	80%

Against pitchers

Fastballs	Ball	20%
	Called Strike	34%
	Foul	18%
	Swinging Strike	4%
	In Play	24%
	Swing	46%
	Contact	92%
Knucklers	Ball	27%
	Called Strike	12%
	Foul	15%
	Swinging Strike	16%
	In Play	30%
	Swing	61%
	Contact	74%
Overall	Ball	24%
	Called Strike	22%
	Foul	16%
	Swinging Strike	11%
	In Play	27%
	Swing	54%
	Contact	80%

I know there’s a lot of information in there. Not all of it is important. Against position players, Dickey threw 67% strikes, whereas against pitchers, Dickey threw 76% strikes. This indicates that Dickey was a lot more aggressive within the zone. Pitchers swung more often against both Dickey’s fastball and Dickey’s knuckler, and though they made less frequent contact against the knuckler, it wasn’t less frequent by much. Pitchers were still able to put the bat on the ball, maybe because their timing already sucks. And Dickey’s fastball, which he threw a lot more often to pitchers, is just not a swing-and-miss pitch. It’s a fastball in the 80s.

What’s been the end result of all this? Some more numbers for you:

• NL non-pitchers, 2010-2012: .261/.328/.410
• NL pitchers, 2010-2012: .138/.172/.176

And:

• Non-pitchers vs. Dickey, 2010-2012: .246/.299/.378
• Pitchers vs. Dickey, 2010-2012: .204/.219/.238

Against R.A. Dickey, pitchers haven’t hit well. But they’ve hit better than they have against other pitchers, even though Dickey has been an above-average pitcher. Over the last three years, Dickey has allowed 30 hits to pitchers. Plug in the league-average numbers and he would’ve allowed 20 hits to pitchers. It’s a small difference that might be entirely due to the limited sample size, but, there you go. Dickey has taken it somewhat easy on opposing pitchers, and opposing pitchers have hit better against Dickey than they have against non-Dickey. They’ve put the ball in play more often, and they’ve reached base more often.

In the past, Dickey has expressed a desire to have more success against opposing pitchers. He might’ve been able to do this by just throwing more knuckleballs, but now it won’t matter anymore, since Dickey’s moved on to the American League. In that regard, this post doesn’t mean much of anything. It’s strictly a look back at a curious phenomenon. But if there are people out there who think Dickey is due for a rough adjustment to the AL since he won’t get to feast on pitchers, well, about that. It should be less of a factor than you might think.