Take John Smoltz Seriously, Not Literally
In the top of the fourth inning of Saturday’s Braves-Cardinals tilt, Atlanta struck for four runs, breaking a scoreless tie and setting the team up in an enviable position. Leading off the bottom of the inning, St. Louis’ Tyler O’Neill walked on four straight pitches against Charlie Morton. That walk cost the Braves; two batters later, Andrew Knizner popped a two-run homer that brought the Cardinals within two runs.
On the broadcast, John Smoltz was livid even before the home run. “The last thing you want to do is walk the leadoff hitter after the team gave you four runs…. You don’t care if he hits a 3–1 pitch for a homer. Just don’t walk him.” He said that even before O’Neill walked, and emphasized the point throughout the inning.
Aaron Goldsmith, handling play-by-play, asked Smoltz to elaborate. “You’re not being facetious, you actually mean that? You’d rather have a run on the board than a runner at first base?” Smoltz stuck to his guns, said he preferred the homer to the walk, and that was that.
Here’s a bit of an upset: I understood what Smoltz was talking about. In fact, I think that if you give him a little leeway, he might have a point. Sure, it’s fun to point at a statement like that and laugh. It’s absurd on its face. The worst-case outcome of a walk is a run scoring. The only outcome of a solo home run is a run scoring. There’s just no way a rational observer could come to any other conclusion.
That said: I don’t think that’s what Smoltz meant. Consider this: no major league pitcher has ever thrown a pitch that they knew with certainty would turn into a home run when it left their hand. That’s just not how baseball works. Position players lob plenty of objectively terrible pitchers that don’t leave the yard every time they handle mop-up duty. The meatiest meatball Morton could throw is far from a certain home run. If we think a little more about process, and a little less about outcomes, this silly debate takes on new light.
Think of this statement: “The last thing you want to do is take an approach that makes it likely you’ll walk the leadoff hitter after the team gave you four runs. You don’t care if your strike-throwing approach makes him more likely to hit a homer. Just don’t pitch in a way that makes it likely you’ll walk him.”
That’s pretty close to what Smoltz said, at least if you adjust for the fact that human beings are awful at discussing probabilistic outcomes. Pitchers don’t have exclusive control over whether the batter at the plate hits a home run. They don’t have exclusive control over whether the batter walks, either.
If we think about what a pitcher controls in a given plate appearance rather than the eventual result of that appearance, we can give Smoltz’s statement the earnest scrutiny it deserves, because what a Hall of Fame pitcher thinks about the proper way to attack an opposing team is worth evaluating. I’m going to evaluate the win expectancy of pitching to contact as compared to pitching “regularly” to lead off an inning, and we’ll see whether the concept — if not the literal words — makes sense.
What does pitching to avoid a walk mean? I’ve looked into the math of 3–0 counts before, and I can tell you that pitchers throw the ball in the strike zone roughly 61% of the time in them. I can also tell you that when pitchers still batted, they saw strikes on 68% of 3–0 pitches. That appears to be the high end of pitchers’ ability to throw strikes, but let’s go even farther and call it 75%. After all, if you reach 3–0 with a pitcher in the batter’s box, you might not be at your strike-throwing best at the moment.
Okay, so there’s your walk-avoiding strategy: jam the strike zone full of pitches like your opponent isn’t even standing there. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Smoltz was advocating for switching to that mode the second Morton got behind in the count 1–0. If Morton got ahead in the count, sure, fine, go for a strikeout. But behind in the count? All fastballs, all pipe shots, all the time; you could theoretically still walk somebody pitching this way, but it would be phenomenally unlikely.
If you don’t feel like reading the nitty gritty of the math, don’t worry: while it’s worth showing, it’s not of outsize importance in this case. If you’d like to skip it, you can just search this article for the word “rigamarole” and avoid it all entirely. That said, you could always stick around for it if you’d like, because I sure enjoyed figuring it out.
In fact, we can do the math on this fairly easily. Assuming independent and identically distributed pitches, the odds of missing the zone (a 25% shot) three times in a row are a piddling 1.5%. That’s not the only way you can walk someone, but it’s one of the most likely ways. Let’s make a few assumptions to handle the other cases.
Given that our strategy is essentially to throw the ball right down the middle, I took the major league average swing rate on pitches over the heart of the plate in each count, as well as the rate at which they turned into balls in play. That looks like so:
| Count | Ball | Strike | In Play |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-0 | 25% | 53% | 22% |
| 1-1 | 25% | 47% | 28% |
| 1-2 | 25% | 42% | 33% |
| 2-0 | 25% | 52% | 23% |
| 2-1 | 25% | 46% | 29% |
| 2-2 | 25% | 42% | 33% |
| 3-0 | 25% | 69% | 6% |
| 3-1 | 25% | 47% | 28% |
| 3-2 | 25% | 41% | 34% |
I ran through the math, and by my (admittedly rough) numbers, this works out to a 5.5% walk rate after starting behind in the count 1–0. The overall rate across the league is 15.6% after 1–0 counts with the bases empty. In other words, our hypothetical pitcher is following through on Smoltz’s plan, limiting walks above all else.
What does the no-walk plan cost when it comes to hard contact? We can make an approximation there as well. To limit walks, you need to throw the ball right down the middle. Hitters, naturally, do more damage when they connect on meatballs like that, particularly when they’re fastballs. Want the numbers? Batters are hitting .350 with a .622 slugging percentage when they unload on middle-middle fastballs while ahead in the count, which is a close approximation for the situation at hand. They’re hitting homers on 6.3% of their batted balls, as compared to 4.1% of batted balls overall.
Here’s an outcome matrix for the control case in this study. In other words, it’s what the league as a whole does in 1–0 situations with the bases empty in aggregate. One quick note: I’ve folded HBPs into walks to make the line items cleaner:
| Approach | K% | BB% | 1B% | 2B% | 3B% | HR% | Other Out% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-0, Bases Empty | 19.1% | 15.6% | 13.3% | 4.3% | 0.4% | 3.0% | 44.2% |
With that in tow, we can make an easy comparison to the Smoltz plan: forcing the hitter to put the ball in play by throwing fastballs down the middle. That .350 batting average and .622 slugging percentage is impressive, and when you split it out into the individual outcomes, you can see that singles, doubles, and home runs all become more likely when batters are teeing off on pitches to hit:
| Approach | K% | BB% | 1B% | 2B% | 3B% | HR% | Other Out% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-0, Bases Empty | 19.1% | 15.6% | 13.3% | 4.3% | 0.4% | 3.0% | 44.2% |
| 1-0, Smoltz Plan | 10.0% | 5.5% | 17.5% | 6.0% | 0.4% | 5.3% | 55.3% |
That 10% strikeout number is approximated from the zone and swing data above, and there’s definitely room for it to be higher or lower. We’re squarely into the realm of theory at this point anyway. But you can plug each of those possible outcomes into our WPA Inquirer, add them up, and get at least a generic result.
The result in question: if Morton had pitched completely normally after reaching a 1–0 count (which he did), the Braves stood to win the game 85.86% of the time. If Morton instead went full meatball, the Braves stood to win the game 85.85% of the time.
That’s such a small difference that I’m comfortable saying it’s immaterial. You could imagine other versions of the “Smoltz plan,” though, that work better. If Morton had switched from a regular approach to only pipe-shot fastballs in a 2–0 count, he might see better results. There, batters walk 28.5% of the time with the bases empty across all situations. By accepting loud contact in exchange for walks, Morton could have slashed that expected walk rate to roughly 18%. The new grid looks like this:
| Approach | K% | BB% | 1B% | 2B% | 3B% | HR% | Other Out% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-0, Bases Empty | 14.8% | 28.5% | 11.7% | 3.6% | 0.3% | 3.0% | 38.0% |
| 2-0, Smoltz Plan | 8.0% | 18% | 15.3% | 5.3% | 0.4% | 4.7% | 48.4% |
Now, switching to the maximally aggressive strike-throwing option actually improves Atlanta’s odds of winning the game, from 85.3% to 85.4%. Again, that’s close enough that I’d call the two equivalent, particularly given the amount of approximating I’ve done, but you can see where Smoltz was coming from.
After all that rigamarole, the numbers hardly seem to matter. Should you go all out to throw strikes? Should you pitch normally, ignoring the score? Neither affects the outcome of the game overly much. But it’s clear that there are some situations — up a lot of runs, with not many outs left in the game, and in hitters’ counts — where “pitching to contact” makes sense.
In fact, what Smoltz said is just a slightly different packaging of wisdom that I think we’d all agree with. Home runs can happen to any pitcher, with any batter at the plate. Heck, David Fletcher has two of them this year. It’s not hard to imagine there are situations where making a batter more likely to hit a home run — by challenging him, basically — is just the cost of doing business. If you really want to avoid baserunners, sometimes you’re going to give up a few extra homers. It doesn’t mean you want to give up the home runs — rather that the extra outs you’re getting by avoiding walks are worth the cost.
So, should you actually prefer to give up a home run to a walk? I mean, no. Of course you shouldn’t. I guarantee you that if someone went up to Smoltz when he was on the mound and told him that the batter he was facing was going to be awarded either a home run or a walk without Smoltz throwing a single pitch, he’d pick the walk. That’s not rocket science. But he might be more upset with himself after surrendering a walk, because that’s largely in his control, than after giving up a home run that he knew was always a possibility. Changing your pitching style to limit the odds of letting a runner reach base without the chance of making an out, when you’re pitching with a lead? I’m not saying the math supports it, but there’s a discussion to be had there, so long as you take Smoltz seriously rather than literally.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Bluesky @benclemens.
Ben Clemens hits the nail on the head.
How about Smoltz’s idea to have a stat for productive outs?
(that can’t just be his idea, or?)
I feel like John Smoltz is intelligent enough to understand statistics, he just sucks at communicating. He knows what he means, it’s just that nobody else does because no one has any clue what he actually means.
EDIT: …this looks like I wrote it while half-asleep. Which I did, honestly. What I mean is, Smoltz knows what he means in his own head, but nobody understands his points because he communicates poorly.
Your initial description of John Smoltz is basically how John Smoltz would describe the concept of John Smoltz!
…or how Yogi Berra would describe it.
The annual Bill James Handbooks list productive outs by team and individual player.
When did he start doing that? Is this available online?
I’m not sure when he started, but I have physical handbooks going back to the 2016 season’s data.
As for on-line, I checked but I’m not finding much. His site, Bill James Online, isn’t great as a repository of stats, I’m sorry to say.
Here’s the irony about the productive outs concept – whatever formula/algorithm you use to calculate it, you really should give more credit when the “helpful” out comes in a tight game vs. a game that’s a blowout. Because for a team that’s more than a few runs behind, outs are your worst enemy.
Which is most likely the core truth behind what Smoltz was trying to get across.
good point!
The issue I have with that is that nobody ever tries to hit into a productive out unless they’re bunting or occasionally trying to hit a fly ball to drive in a run with a sac fly (which is why successful sac bunts and sac flies aren’t counted as at-bats). Otherwise, moving the runner over is merely a consolation prize when you fail to get a hit. It’s also ironically the softer hit ground balls that are more likely to move a runner over while also being the ones less likely to allow you to get a hit.
Sometimes, with the right pitch, a batter may try to hit the ball to the right side of the field to make it easier to move a runner from 2nd to 3rd base, but that’s still only a secondary motive to trying to get a hit to right field and only if they feel they can hit it well to the right side with the particular pitch they get.
Thus, I don’t think there should be any statistical credit given for failing at your primary objective, while the consolation prize of moving a runner over is usually more of a factor of luck than skill, save for managing to put the ball in play rather than striking out in the first place. You might as well just give statistical credit for strikeout rate with runners on base, which shouldn’t be a significant skill difference from overall strikeout rate anyway.
If guys have out tendencies, those will help fine tune a guy’s true value.
The point of standing in the batters box with a piece of nicely lathed wood in your hand is to put it in play. One could argue that the job is to put the ball in play, the objective is to get a hit. I think one could also argue that the only way to fail at your job in this instance is to not put the ball in play.
Maybe we don’t give them credit for intent. However, if in one scenario an out is incurred and the runner doesn’t move over, and in another scenario the runner does move over, probabilities change. The benefit is real. If two player have identical batting lines, but one strikes out 80 times a year and the other strikes out 180, there will be real, measurable differences in the amount of value they provided, how much they contributed to wins. And this difference in value comes simply from one batter failing to do his job completely, and the other batter only failing to do his job partially.
Could be a slippery slope. Should hitters not get credit for full swing bunt-hits? They failed at their objective but ended up on base, credited with a hit. Do we credit them for a hit even though a fielder might’ve made a 10% or 20% probability play?
I could see the need for an advanced view into this to account for the value. But this outcome is not the result of luck or because of the presence of a shift or anything like that. It’s explainable, it’s repeatable, and the value it contributes is measurable. If it’s real, we know it’s real, and we know how to quantify and account for it, why not recognize that value? I’d want to be careful not to penalize someone for having a good foundation or process or approach.
At most jobs, if an employee has a process that means that even when they fail to complete their objective, they have advanced a company initiative or mitigated risk in someway, I would think the employees would want some sort of acknowledgement. Even if that wasn’t their intent, but instead a result of a good process that mitigates downside and provides more margin for error. The company still sees benefits from that value, and if they get said value from employee A but not employee B, and all else is equal, employee A is more valuable every time. Whether it’s on purpose or not, employee A is more valuable because he has a better process, and the company has to recognize that somewhere at some level…
I already said that putting the ball in play is a valuable skill, but we already give them statistical credit for that with strikeout stats. Once the ball is put into play, however, the only skill involved is getting a hit, not moving runners over when you fail to do so. There is no additional good process in that case, merely luck! If there’s no extra skill involved, and the value is only secondary to what you truly want, then there’s no point in giving extra credit for it. Merely moving the runner over involves neither intent nor process save for what was already acknowledged in avoiding the strikeout!
Also, yes we do give credit for swinging bunt hits, because yes they did actually fulfill their objective of getting on base irregardless of how lucky it was. The difference there is that it was the primary objective that was achieved through luck rather than a minor consolation prize.
Instead of guessing – this could be easily proven/disproven. Are “productive outs” predictable based on past performance? I’d assume left/right batter matters a lot (pulled grounders with a man on 2nd being a common scenario). But if we control for that (and strikeouts), are some lefties consistently better at “moving along the runner”, or is it all just noise?
I would guess that Grounder/Liner/Flyball rates matter a lot on this. As does intent – because some players do seem to swing for different effect in different situations and others seem to swing the same for all situations. But those are guesses. Let’s have someone look at the numbers!
Very good article. Smoltz statement is more about the process than the result. Avoid the walk as good as you can and you’ll be better off while accepting there is an increased chance (!) of a homerun.
Smoltz has always seemed like a guy who would be received so much more positively were he just able to express himself a bit better.
He comes off as someone who doesn’t want to be there; someone who doesn’t like baseball (in it’s current form).
Smoltz is at the center of a lot of my earliest and fondest baseball memories, so it’s honestly very sad to me that I loathe when he is the commenter on a game I’m watching.
The sad thing is that when he was starting out at announcing, he was actually pretty darn good (ARod as well). Not sure how that fell apart so darn quickly.
I don’t like baseball (as much) in its current form, either.
I obviously really, really love baseball, or I wouldn’t be a member of this site and watch as many games as I do. That said, Major League Baseball in its current form is an inferior product that’s not as dynamic or interesting as the game I grew-up watching and enjoyed until around the early 2010’s.
I get that the athletes are better today. The positioning and strategy are all smarter today.
Unfortunately, all of that leads to a way more boring, static product: less contact, less action on the bases, less opportunities for fielders to dazzle us with athletic plays.
Another thing that diminishes my enjoyment of the game – and people of Smoltz’ generation probably feel the same – is the general lack fundamental play. Back when Smoltz played, even the second lefty out of the bullpen knew what to do when he got a comebacker. There’s so much inexplicably lousy play when it comes to fundamentals.
Yes, pitchers throw harder with more movement and higher spin rates. Batters hit balls with higher exit velocities and launch angles.
But if you spent your life in baseball, it’s tough watching batters having one entire side the infield open and they’re striking out 30-40% of the time trying to pull a ball in the air. It’s tough watching the lack of fundamental play that you see on the basepaths and in the field.
The “Three True Outcomes” version of baseball is not as fun or entertaining as the version that allowed for more batted balls, more stolen bases, more hitting and running.
Charles Balter, I would like to thank you for articulating beautifully views that I am in complete agreement with. I am much older than you and the game I grew up with was so much better than what we see today. One of my favorite comparisons is Bob Feller against every pitcher in the game today. Feller, the preeminent strikeout pitcher of his era, led the league in strikeouts every full season he pitched between 1938 and 1948, yet he averaged fewer K’s/9 innings over his career, 6.1, than EVERY qualified pitcher in 2022 with the exception of Marco Gonzales. Today’s game can’t compare with the dynamic action before the strikeout dominated the game. 32 HR’s led the AL in 1952, 1954 and as late as 1965 only 2 players hit over 30 in the AL .Pitchers took the ball, threw it and more often than not hitters actually put it in play and defenders chased it. Those days could be seen again if The Lords of Baseball would give the hitters a chance by moving the mound back to increase balls in play and then deadening the ball
IMO the sweet spot was the era before the strike with everyone running all the time. Tim Raines, Rickey Henderson, Marquis Grissom, etc.
Anything the league can do to incentivize stolen bases I am here for.
he’s definitely cut from the same cloth of a Brian McCann/Freddie Freeman with his clear disdain for players who don’t “carry themselves the right way” or “play the game the right way”. He is awful for the sport
Brian McCann I can see, but when has Freddie Freeman ever openly shown disdain? The only time I ever remember him not being openly friendly and jovial with all players on the field was in the middle of the Acuna/Marlins spat where Marlins pitching kept pegging Acuna.
I agree, Smoltz just seems to be so unhappy with the way the game is currently played and it makes listening to him announce a game a miserable experience.
Which, IMO, means he gets the reception he deserves. His job is to communicate and he is bad at it!
A similar idea for an article, if it hasn’t been done, would be the “home runs are rally killers” mantra, which is another example that doesn’t make sense mathematically but does make sense psychologically.
I don’t think that makes sense psychology though. If you have men on base, you’re hoping they’ll come around to score. A home run guarantees that all of those runners score. How can that be anything less than a perfect outcome?
If someone offered you a walk and a home run, or two singles and a triple, take the two singles and a triple… because you’re left with another baserunner on who can score. “Rally killer” is stupid and you don’t usually get to choose how the runs come in, but it’s very intuitive to say that you’d rather have a guy on than nobody on, all else equal.
If you’re stringing a bunch of hits together, you’re constantly having runners on base, which is tougher for the battery and defense than facing a batter with no runners on base.
That’s mostly noise though. I don’t care what’s harder for the battery and defense, I care about scoring as many runs as possible
Right. Harder to get a hit when there are no runners on base, so harder to score more runs.
I interpreted the statement as, “You should go after hitters when your team gives you a four-run lead; the last thing you want to do is nibble.” Probably most of us here did. I think the main issue (communication-wise) is that Smoltz’s comments might be taken literally by the “casual fan” that might not be able to see the nuanced truth in an admittedly over-the-top hyperbolic remark.
The problem is that it is not the casual fan that is taking umbrage. The casual fan isn’t reading Fangraphs. It’s the data-centric fan that is looking to sharp-shoot Smoltz that is taking umbrage by acting like he actually meant he would rather have someone homer than walk when instead what he is saying is the odds of a big inning increase by allowing a walk because you are being too cautious vs just throwing strikes and potentially allowing a homer. Smoltz definitely isn’t always right, but it is unfair for the data-centric fan to twist what they know that he means just tho s**** on him.
To be fair, if he is a “professional announcer” he could choose his words a bit more clearly…
John is very intelligent and also extremely competitive. I appreciate the perspective of “the man in the ring” per se. I believe the comment was about process, but salted strongly with the words of a competitor.
No, he isn’t. Very intelligent people are able to transform their thoughts into cogent sentences and arguments. He speaks a language that’s more regional dialect than it is English
You obviously don’t know anyone with a communication or social anxiety disorder. There are plenty of very smart people, even some geniuses, who have trouble describing their intelligent thoughts with coherent speech, even if it’s not so bad as to be considered a disorder. There are even some who can’t even express themselves well in writing.
It’s also sometimes difficult for people who understand something so incredibly well to the point of it being innate to their consciousness to clearly communicate it to a lay audience. Happens all the time with quants in investing, leave out info that’s important/accessible to a lay audience and overindex on info that makes sense to a small handful.
Smoltz is a brilliant baseball mind but he is an absolutely awful communicator. Tropey ridiculous statements like “don’t walk the first guy” are used to motivate or distract an athlete and are not meant to be taken literally or as gospel… but he hasn’t managed to zoom his perspective out since he has retired.
Maybe this is obvious, but Smoltz is clearly talking from the standpoint of a former player. He is not considering probabilistic outcomes at all.
Again, maybe this is obvious, but as a former collegiate pitcher, we were taught that if our team puts up a crooked number, go out there and get your defense back in the dugout as soon as possible. As if the team had captured an offensive magic and there was a certain amount of time that could countdown between our plate appearances before the magic would run out.
On the one hand, it’s a narrative that’s fun to believe; have the other team put balls in play to keep your defense/offense engaged and rolling so they can get back in and continue to hit. Take the 30-35% chance of a batted ball going for a hit in less time vs the extended down time it takes to walk a batter that leads to no action except for the middle infielders moving into double play position… get the pitcher your team feasted on back on the mound before he has a chance to catch his breath. If you scored 4 runs, at least 7 guys came to the plate, so get that lineup turned over before the opposing pitcher can adjust his game plan.
On the other hand, from an analytical perspective, we know, or at least confidently assume, this is hogwash. Yes, prior performance is an indicator of future performance, but not within the small sample of one game or an inning.
Of course, the only way to truly see this through would be to look at an offense’s performance in innings following a crooked number after a quick inning on defense vs a long inning on defense – and preferably, I think, vs the same SP they faced in the crooked number inning. Of course then we have to set the parameters for each of those situations and also, dauntingly, comb through years of game logs to find a large enough sample of crooked number innings to feel comfortable with the result. Because of this, it’s probably just easier to assume regression to the mean and say Smoltz is off base. We can also assume Smoltz, or most former players currently commentating, will continue to live and die by the idea of momentum and on the field, old school ideals that give players a sense of belief and comraderie that helps them with existential dread and the relative meaninglessness of dedicating their lives to baseball.
Got a little weird at the end there, but I stand by most of what I said
Actually, prior performance *is* an indicator of future performance over the course of a single inning if a pitcher has lost his control due to becoming tired or some other reason.
I generally agree with you, but in any kind of competition, there is a psychological component which clearly impacts performance. Just because we don’t understand how to quantify it yet doesn’t mean it’s “hogwash.”
That is actually what I meant – I had a John smoltz communication moment. I was throwing a little shade at our analytical community that seems to ignore unquantifyable things like momentum or confidence
Pitching aggressively with the bases empty is what Scherzer does. And he gives up a lot of solo homers.
Jim Palmer, who never gave up a grand slam, similarly gave up a ton of solo homers and had the same philosophy as Smoltz. He also noted that he didn’t try to strike everyone out because it wasn’t productive for him (I know this can be a bit controversial) but noted that when he needed a strikeout, e.g. a runner on third, his strikeout rate was 22% higher.
Palmer pitched while being backed by several of the greatest defenders of all time–he knew it was good to take advantage of Belanger, Brooks Robinson, Bobby Grich, etc. Of course, Palmer, unlike Smoltz, can actually explain his approach in a way both casuals and stat nerds can understand and accept.
Verlander does, too, at least since moving over to Houston.
In a recent game Smoltz-y dismissively complained about measuring spin rates and other “analytics”.
Then within 10 minutes was explaining that what many people don’t get is some fastballs are easy to hit, and some are harder to hit. And the harder to hit ones have a lot more backspin.
I’ll take him neither seriously nor literally.
Except that most measures of spin rate just give the RPM, and the spin axis turns out to be very important to how much effect and what effect all those RPM actually have.
Backspin /= all other spin.
Smoltz may well be perfectly correct to be dismissive of RPM based spin rates if he means those without other context. And in any case, in the Sunday game under discussion, there was substantial discussion among the announcers, including Smoltz, of the importance of spin and movement in how effective Wainwrights’ curveball is and I don’t recall anything that indicated that Smoltz didn’t have a fine understanding of the importance of spin rate to movement.
If you read my comment (not even that) closely… the point isn’t to say Smoltz doesn’t understand the effect of spin.
Out of one side of his mouth he explains why spin is important, and out of the other he says people who measure spin don’t understand baseball, because they’re “analytics” nerds. If the nerds don’t understand the importance of spin, why are they measuring spin in the first place.
Also, the idea that teams aren’t factoring in axis, but you know how important it is… is crazy.
Finally, I was talking about he Javier-Strider game from a while back. So you’re telling me I’m “wrong” without even knowing what game I watched.
Love the topic, great read…Maybe another look would be to see how this impacts the individual pitcher? Walks generally take more pitches than HRs, I assume, and switch at least SPs into the stretch, seeds are then planted for a high pitch count inning and all the dangers that entails
Just an unrelated question, where is Longenhagen? Haven’t seen any articles in almost a month?
Probably taking a vacation. First time in probably a year.
“Now, switching to the maximally aggressive strike-throwing option actually improves Atlanta’s odds of winning the game, from 85.3% to 85.4%.”
I feel like these sorts of statements contribute to confusion about probabilistic thinking. Atlanta’s odds of winning “the” (last Saturday’s) game is 0%, and it was always 0%, we just did not know that until the game happened. The term “actually improves” as used here is particularly problematic.
I understand that most of the readers of this blog know exactly what Ben means, and he is using a bit of shorthand by not mentioning that the numbers come from a projection model trained on past outcomes. It is just ironic to me that folks want to criticize Smoltz for poorly communicating probabilistic concepts in this case.
>I understand that most of the readers of this blog know exactly what Ben means, and he is using a bit of shorthand by not mentioning that the numbers come from a projection model trained on past outcomes. It is just ironic to me that folks want to criticize Smoltz for poorly communicating probabilistic concepts in this case.
#1 rule of communication: “know your audience”
Ben knows he is writing an article on Fangraphs so he does not need to walk through what WPA means in order to not confuse the readers.
That does bring to an interesting point, perhaps the same one you were getting to.
Who IS John Smoltz’s audience when he is broadcasting games for Fox sports?
Are they interested in/capable of understanding probabilistic concepts?
Target audience for Smoltz is not somebody who knows how to properly capitalize xwOBAcon, nor should it be.
Ultimately, non-binary thinking goes a long way.
If people want to assign ‘right/wrong’, ‘good/bad’ to things Smoltz says (and the man himself), then sure, you are free to do so.
But it might be better for us to follow in Ben’s footsteps and try to extract what is potentially useful and interesting to you from what Smoltz said.
Yes, Smoltz says things I deem stupid/wrong/misleading.
But also yes, he has incomparable amount of knowledge about the game of baseball as it is played on the field and those valuable insights can be found if you patiently look deeper beyond the surface .
Is the searching process always worth it? No.
But sometimes, it is.
Whoa, whoa, whoa…
“Atlanta’s odds of winning “the” (last Saturday’s) game is 0%, and it was always 0%, we just did not know that until the game happened.”
Atlanta’s odds of winning last Saturday’s game was always 0%? When did they decide that and who decided? If I can find the game deciders I have some large, large wagers I need to place…
(In all seriousness that statement is nowhere even sort of close to the truth unless you are retroactively assigning winning percentages post hoc, which…alright?)
I hate when people overcomplicate things.
DON’T WALK THE LEADOFF HITTER in the late innings of a game with a two-run lead. You never walk the leadoff hitter. It is absolutely the worst thing you can do. When your team takes the lead and the pitcher comes in and walks the leadoff hitter, it’s a terrible feeling as a fan, and no doubt for coaches and teammates.
I get that statistics are valuable, but it’s sometimes absurd the lengths to which people go either to prove or disprove something that’s really obvious. John Smoltz is a championship, Cy Young award-winning, Hall of Fame pitcher who excelled as a starter and a closer on great teams.
OF COURSE you do everything in your power not to walk the leadoff hitter after your offense has given you a two-run lead. You can write as many 2000-word articles with as many advanced stats and metrics as you like. It will all lead back to the same place: don’t walk the leadoff hitter in tight spots in close games.
SOMETIMES, someone will hit a home run off you. EVERY TIME you walk someone, that’s an out you didn’t record, an extra out you have to get, an extra baserunner that the opponent can score.
I guess John Smoltz must have crossed the statheads at some point in his life, but it’s completely obvious what he was saying, and he’s right.
“EVERY TIME you walk someone, that’s an out you didn’t record, an extra out you have to get,”
I feel like you still have the same number of outs until the end of the game. Or are you assuming that every non-walk outcome is an out? That’s not good assumption. Or a fair one given the context of this ‘debate’ was about walk vs. HR.
Let me drink this cup of coffee and think about that and get back to you.
This is how I feel about “hot hand” in NBA. There was a statistics paper that claimed it didn’t actually exist and had some good data and methodology to go along with it. But at some point, when every single practitioner believes it does exist, it will take really extraordinary evidence to prove them wrong.
If a man is paid to explain things he sees to people watching what he’s seeing on television and entire articles have to be written to untangle his words he’s perhaps not in the right line of work.
Finally a post for the Smoltz stans
My understanding is that in the ninth inning specifically, with the team currently batting down by multiple runs, a walk with the bases empty is pretty much just as bad as a solo home run from a win probability standpoint. (This is not true earlier in the game, of course.)
Yep. Which is why the catcher indifference scoring is a thing on SB attempts.
people like John Smoltz are a big part of why I listen to music during sporting events on TV
I often hear people say “but its so hard…”. But I listen to enough baseball podcasts that I know… no, it’s not that hard for people to talk off the cuff about baseball without being openly antagonistic toward current players an the current style of play.
You have to think about the psychology of the player.
After a home run, the bases are empty. You can turn the page and face the next batter. There’s no runner to worry about. The opponent has to get a home run or multiple hits to score again. You get to throw anywhere and any pitch from any position, without having to worry about passed balls. The defense also doesn’t have to worry about holding runners, covering steals, or who to throw to when the ball’s in play; just make the out at 1st base. There’s less pressure on everyone.
After a walk, there’s a runner on first. There’s a bigger hole between 1B and 2B that the batter can find. A double potentially scores the runner. You have to pitch from the stretch. Off-speed pitches and burying pitches in the dirt carry greater risks. And simply having a runner on base, especially one who can run a little bit, is going to nag at your brain and make it a little harder to focus (and this is true for the defense and catcher as well). That makes it harder to get the next batter out, and increases the chance of a big inning.
There are plenty of reasons why pitching after a home run is easier than pitching after a walk. The score matters, of course, but the point isn’t what happens to the current hitter; it’s about the difficulty of getting the next batter out.
So the statistic you should actually be looking at is how pitchers perform immediately following a home run, vs immediately after a walk.
I played with a guy in college who had this exact train of thought – he’d rather just give up a home run and be done with it rather than deal with all the extra that comes with having runners on base.
I think this goes back to Ben’s point though (as well as yours), where it’s not necessarily about the binary choice of whether a walk or home run is worse, but how they impact the broader game situation and what comes next.
This is good
From the game-theoretic standpoint, it’s like this:
On MLB.tv I miss the option to hear ballpark sounds instead of the announcers. It makes the experience of watching TV more like the experience of being in the park. I hope they bring it back.
I’m down on Smoltz as a broadcaster as much as the next guy, but I have to give him credit: Saturday night was easily the best performance he’s ever given that I’ve seen.
Even from a practical standpoint, Smoltz has a point. Walking the leadoff man often indicates that the pitcher is currently suffering from a lack of control. Therefore, he’s more likely to give up a crooked number than a guy who merely makes a single mistake to give up a solo dinger, or at least pretty close to it. (It’s the same reason why leadoff walks score significantly more often than leadoff singles.) With a multiple run lead, giving up that crooked number is then more dangerous.
If the walk is a result of lack of control, Smoltz’s point is moot.
Smoltz is talking about choosing to pitch around dudes and not challenge them.
No, he was only talking about how a lead-off walk with a mulit-run lead can be worse than a lead-off homer while not saying anything about why the lead-off guy drew the walk. It was only this article that went with the idea of using Smoltz’s statement as a idea for adjusting the pitching approach to try and increase the pitcher’s odds before the walk is even completed.
However, Smoltz’s idea can also be interpreted from a results-oriented approach.
Smoltz understands the nuances of the game and his comment about not walking the leadoff man after grabbing a sizable lead is handing back some of the momentum that was just gained. Would the momentum change of the leadoff man hit a HR, of course, but that is not a probable outcome. It is much more likely that by attacking the first hitter after gaining the lead the pitcher is maintaining that small edge. The reality is shown in the miniscule change in WPA from the various outcomes but what is the value of giving the appearance of being in control. To Smoltz it is clear that he considers important.
Interesting deep-dive! This was a fun one to read.
One extremely minor detail: when describing the math for your maximal strike-throwing case, you wrote “Assuming independent and independently distributed pitches.” I assume this should have been “independent and identically distributed” instead?
I sure do! That’s what happens two hours into writing on a Sunday
Smoltz’s old-school approach is throughly understandable, but I have no criticism in how Morton approached O’Neill— and the rest of the hitters that inning! That it didn’t work out is almost irrelevant. The first two hitters were O’Neill and Gorman, who are generally known for a lot of Ks and a lot of power, even though O’Neill has disappointed this year. If the Cards were going to score in that inning: it was probably going to be via a long ball from those two! So he gives neither much to hit but is around the zone. O’Neill walks, Gorman pops out. Then Knizer’s up. The first two pitches are balls, so Morton indeed switches to pumping in fastballs, the second of which is a cutter right down the middle that Knizer homered on.
Not every hitter should be attacked the same. Yeah, you’d prefer not to walk O’Neill if possible, but he’s got huge raw pop: the chances of him homering on a meatball are presumably better than average; for his career he homers once every 20 PAs, much better than the league’s rate this year of a HR of once every 35 PAs. Gorman also didn’t see a fastball, in the zone or no, for much the same reason. Instead, Knizer gets the meatballs. Why? Because he has a career .077 ISO, with just 5 career dingers in 489 PAs, once every 98 (!) PAs. That’s including this particular homer; he homers so rarely that right before that dinger, he was homering once every 121 PA!
Knizer also walks at a well above average rate. If given the choice between 1) throwing a 2-0 meatball or two to O’Neill with no outs and the bases clear and 2) throwing a 2-0 meatball or two to Knizer with a runner on 1st and 1 out, is Knizer with a man on not still the right choice? I don’t have the ability to calculate that, I think ZiPS would have to be employed to estimate. But adding in the probability of getting 2 outs out of Knizer via GIDP— a RHH catcher with a career GB/FB well over 1 is pretty ideal for that— and it seems like Morton’s approach was, frankly, correct.
It’s weird to me to see so many comments denigrative of Smoltz’s announcing work, as I’ve always considered him one of the better national announcers. It’s possible that he polishes his craft somewhat for the larger audience, and there’s also the fact that his ‘competition’ is the likes of Cal Ripkin and Harold Reynolds. The 2016 World Series at bat between Rajai David and Chapman was to me a good example of some quality commentary from him.
The irony here is that Tyler O’Neal’s 4th inning walk wasn’t even his most significant walk of the game. He also drew a walk-off walk in the bottom of the ninth with bases loaded on a 3-1 pitch from Kenley Jansen. In the latter case, the walk was seriously and figuratively just as effective as a home run.
I’m the absolute last person to defend Smoltz, but if you take him to mean he’d rather pitch like Max Scherzer than Tony Gonsolin — that’s defensible. Scherzer for years was the best pitcher around except he kept giving up solo shots. Means you’re throwing strikes. Sometimes they go for a homer. If you keep the walks and hits down the home runs don’t hurt as bad.
Great read!