One of the informational bits of tid mentioned throughout the course of the article dealt with Maddux’s supposed hatred of waste pitches.  He feels that wasting a pitch on an 0-2 count is nothing but counterproductive.  Intuition to most pitchers chimes in with the thought that batters are very protective on 0-2 counts and are therefore more likely to swing at pitches they would otherwise scoff at.

Now, wasting a pitch does not automatically refer to an extremely high fastball, or one that bounces twenty feet before home plate.  In many cases it simply refers to a pitch out of the zone in order to take advantage of being ahead of the hitter.  It could be in the dirt, and could be very high, but it does not have to be.  If the batter swings, great; if not, you did not plan for it to be a strike to begin with.

On a similar note, deciding against waste pitches does not automatically mean throwing 0-2 pitch right down broadway.  Instead, it could mean approaching the pitch with the same mindset as the 0-0, or 0-1 offering.  It could be treated with as much care as the perfectly placed outside two-seamer delivered on 0-0.

Greg Maddux differs from many pitchers in the sense that he has a ton of movement and can locate with absurd precision.  His two-seam fastball might feel like a waste pitch to certain batters until it tails back to the plate for a strike.  With that in mind I decided to take a look at all of his 0-2 pitches from 2007 until now–all that were recorded by the Pitch F/X system, at least–to see what he threw, where he threw it, and what happened.

What He Threw
Maddux found himself in 128 recorded 0-2 counts since April 2007.  Here is an overall breakdown of what pitchers were thrown:

I apologize for the freakishly large picture. Here is the same breakdown, split by the handedness of batters faced:

Against lefties he has been much more inclined to mix his pitches, throwing many more offspeed pitches. Against righties is has been predominantly fastballs. Where did these pitches go, though?

Where He Threw It
He did not throw many curveballs or “cutslides”–what we have decided to call Maddux’s cutter or slider–so they will be discarded. Here is a location chart of where the fastballs went to lefties and righties (lefties always on the left):

Against lefties Maddux has thrown the majority of his fastballs in the strike zone on 0-2 counts; they have also seemingly been more selective on those out of the zone. When he throws it to righties, though, he has favored the outside corner. The majority of pitches called balls have been very close to the plate, too, likely catalyzing boos from the home crowd when the batter is not rung up. Righties are also making contact (foul or in play) whenever the 0-2 pitch is in the zone.

Here are the location charts of his changeups in these waste pitch situations:

Though he has not thrown a ton of changeups in these counts it does appear he favors the outside corner. As mentioned in the Molina article from last week, he seemed genuinely fooled when the movement and location of Maddux’s fastball and changeup was as close to identical as possible.

Results
Now that we have seen the results of his fastballs and changeups in location chart form, let’s take a numerical look, broken up by batting handedness:

Throwing the fastball to righties has resulted in a .320 BA and a .600 SLG; due to the OBP being the same as his BA in these 0-2 counts, righties have an OPS of .920 against him when throwing fastballs. Last year, overall, righties had a .749 OPS against Maddux and all batters had just a .683 OPS on 0-2 counts. Due to this, it seems that throwing fastballs to righties on 0-2 counts has hurt him.

Linear Weights
Using the linear weights data that old colleague Mike Fast posted in his Francisco Liriano article from last month, here are the run values of each pitch from Maddux in these 0-2 counts:

The linear weights data confirms that the 0-2 fastballs to righties have hurt Maddux.  He has only thrown three total curveballs but they have an aggregate LWTS value of +.227, the only positively valued pitch.  Based on these findings it would seem that Maddux has been hurt by his 0-2 pitch selection.  I am not ready to make a claim of causation and say, point blank, that his poor 0-2 results are directly related to his supposed approach; rather, simply, that he has been hurt by 0-2 pitches.

In terms of the LWTS value per pitch, the cutslide has hurt Maddux the most to batters on both sides of the plate, despite just throwing ten of them.

For Saturday we will take a look at Maddux’s selection/results on the 1-1 pitch, the pitch he claims is the most important due to the swing in momentum between a 1-2 pitch and a 2-1 pitch.

For the rest of this article, let’s assume that we are talking about Game Seven of the World Series and that we don’t need to think about burning out this particular pitcher’s arm for five years down the road.  (Or alternately, let’s pretend that Dusty Baker is the manager.  Sorry to all my Cub fan readers out there… that’s probably a sore subject.)  In other words, I’m only interested in what happens during this game and no other.  When does a pitcher start to lose his mojo?  Is it at 100 pitches?  More?  Fewer?  Again, the eyeball test tells us that it’s something of a gradual process, but if my goal as the manager is to win the game, when would I be best served to take my starter out in favor of a reliever?  (Depends on the bullpen, I know.)  Let’s assume that my pitcher is league average and that the opponent’s line up is made up of 9 league average hitters.  (How did they make it to the World Series?)

There are seven basic outcomes to an at-bat.  Of course, it’s a bit more complex than this, but in general, you either strike out, walk, single, double, triple, hit a home run, or make an out on a ball in play.  You can only choose one of the above.  I took my giant 2000-2006 data base and isolated all the plate appearances (750K+) involving the starting pitcher.  Since pitching changes are rarely made within an at-bat, I calculated the starter’s pitch count at the beginning of each appearance (so he starts out at zero on the first batter and goes from there.)

If you don’t want the gory details, skip the next paragraph.

How to tell if pitch count actually makes a difference (and how much of one at that) in determining which outcome the batter will choose.  First, I calculated the rate at which the batter did the first six outcomes over the course of the year (BB, K, HR, 1B, 2B, and 3B, although I combined 2B and 3B into one simple XBH category) when facing the starter.  I then calculated the rate at which the pitcher allowed each event for the year overall.  I turned those probabilties into odds ratios (OR = p / 1-p), and used the odds ratio method to figure out what was the odds ratio of the probability of that outcome for this batter pitcher matchup (xOR / lgOR = bOR / lgOR * pOR / lgOR).  I took the natural log of that expected odds ratio.  I then plugged that into a binary logit regression, which already works with the natural log of the odds ratio anyway.  Ideally, the coefficient of the ln(OR) predicting in a binary to the outcome should be about 1.0 (since in theory, it’s the same thing.)  But, I also added pitch count into the regresstion to see what happened.  My efforts gave me five regression equations.  (If anyone wants them, e-mail me.)  Again, the actual probabilities will vary with the actual hitters and pitchers, but here I’m assuming league average all around. 

Some of the numbers that I calculated were a little off due to the fact that I ignored HBP, sac bunts, and reached-on-errors (plus a few other things).  Individually, they are hard to model since they are low-frequency events (something that binary logit has a hard time with), but totalled up, they were enough to throw things off a bit.  For example, in 2006, the league average OBP was .337, although most of the values that my model calculated were in the .305 range.  UPDATE: See below, I re-did the numbers and now they make sense.

(One really interesting finding before we go on.  Did you know that walks actually become less likely as the pitcher throws more pitches?  ‘Tis true.  Fewer walks, but more hits.)

Let’s take a look at strikeouts as an example.  The league average starter struck out 15.88% of the batters he faced in 2006 (and conversely, the league average batter struck out 15.88% of the time when facing the starter).  I used the regression equation that the data generated and figured out what the expected probability for a strikeout was at each pitch count.  Again, I’m assuming that we’re dealing with an average hitter facing an average pitcher.  Below I’ve listed the pitch count (at the start of the at-bat), and the probabilities that the confrontation between a league average pitcher vs. a league average batter would result in a strike out.

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Anyway, our happy accident means a little more fun on the roundtable today.  We are pleased to be joined by R.J. Anderson, who writes about the newly exorcized and above .500 Tampa Bay Rays at DRaysBay and about Sabermetrics at Beyond the Box Score.  Also joining us is the newly-engaged (ed note: Mrs. Cutter says “Don’t do it!” - P.C.) Dave Cameron of U.S.S. Mariner (guess which team is his favorite) and the blog on the front page of FanGraphs.  Today, we talk about dumb things that teams did last off-season, Dusty Baker, K/BB, and the future of baseball journalism.

Question #1: At what point do teams start to realize that combining Dusty Baker with young pitching isn’t a good idea?

R.J. Anderson: This is his third job since 2000 and he’s won three manager of the year awards, so I have no doubts we’ll see Dusty in at least one more job along the way. In fact weren’t there some talks about Dusty being a candidate in San Diego? I guess even the smarter organizations have a bit of a soft side for him.

Dave Cameron: We can’t really be talking about performance here, considering how well Edinson Volquez has pitched this year.  Johnny Cueto has had his ups and downs, but I don’t see any reason to think Baker’s responsible for his inconsistency.  So are we talking pitch counts? Volquez has thrown more than 110 pitches just twice this year and Cueto’s only gotten over 100 once.  Yes, the Cubs had problems with Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, but Carlos Zambrano hasn’t really fallen apart due to the strenuous workload that Baker put on him, and turning three hot prospects into one healthy major league pitcher and a couple of injured guys sounds pretty close to normal attrition rates to me. 

Eric Seidman: They won’t, and it has nothing to do with Dusty and young arms.  In no way should this be taken as any sort of racist comment, because I do want there to be more diversity in the managerial ranks, but because major league baseball requires teams to interview minority candidates, teams see friendly old Dusty, the recipient of numerous manager of the year awards, who “guided” a team to the World Series, and find him as an attractive candidate.  He has that Charlie Manuel feel for player personalities and so teams may feel he can help teach a young squad… ultimately forgetting one of his biggest managerial flaws involves the handling of young players, especially young arms. 

Pizza Cutter: I actually had a conversation with a friend at work who is involved in a 20 team fantasy keeper league with minor leaguers.  He’s a pretty astute guy and he told me that he has Homer Bailey and Johnny Cueto on his team.  He was ready to quietly try to trade them to someone else.  Yes, Dusty is the king of over-using young pitchers (I live near Wrigley Field… it’s kinda a sore subject around here) and it sure seems like they all blow out their arms after working for Dusty.  But, before we all fall into Baker-bashing, it’s only fair to ask the other side of the question.  Baker is credited(?) with blowing out the arms of Kerry Wood and Mark Prior.  But, did he at any point do anything that actually benefitted the two of them?  Now, I can’t honestly say that the answer is yes, and I’m not sure how I’d really go about answering it.  But, science requires that we consider the good with the bad.  The other thing to consider is that Dusty did get the Cubs (the Cubs!) within reach of the World Series (unfortunately, also in the reach of Steve Bartman).  Maybe having Wood and Prior pitch that much for that long and having them throw all those pitches was an exercise in going “all in.”  Yes, it was high risk, but the chance at the reward was worth it!  Maybe Dusty knew what he was doing all along.

Nah.

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In case you choose not to read the article–which would be a shame since there are some other great articles as well–I defined a low-risk pitcher signing by parameters in contract duration and salary. For duration, the following qualified:

a) 1-yr deal
b) 1-yr deal w/option
c) Minor League deal
d) Waiver claim

With regards to salary, anything accounting for a maximum of 5.25% of the given team’s salary qualifies. The percentage is used rather than a raw figure to level the field of play between teams with significant payroll discrepancies. For example, Randy Wolf was signed to a 4.75 mil, one-yr deal by the Padres. The Padres have a payroll of 73.68 mil, meaning that Wolf accounts for 6.4% of their entire payroll. He would not qualify by these standards. The same could be said for Livan Hernandez who, despite signing just a 1-yr, 5 mil deal, takes up just under 10% of the Twins payroll. Now, the Mark Prior signing of 1-yr at 1 mil, by the Padres, does qualify. The ONLY time I broke from these parameters dealt with the Florida Marlins, who have an absolutely ridiculous 21 mil payroll.

A little over a month into the season I thought it might be interesting to take a look at this year’s crop of low-risk pitchers. Since we are still dealing with small sample sizes I will refrain from evaluating the signings via dollars per win, as in the article, but we can still see which players have been worth the risk thus far.

By my count, there were 58 low-risk pitcher signings coming into this season; so far just 32 have pitched. The others are either injured or still in the minor leagues.

In the article, I first ranked the players by VORP–Value Over Replacement Player–which, for pitchers, looks at the amount of runs saved relative to a replacement level player given the same amount of opportunities. Once they were compiled, the conversion rate of 10 VORP runs = 1 WAR (Win Above Replacement) helped in determining just how many wins a given pitcher contributed above a replacement level pitcher.

Now, in checking who has truly helped we will compare these WAR totals to the individual league average for all pitchers, not just low-risk pitchers. In the National League, the current average WAR is 0.24; in the American League it is 0.20. Essentially, as of right now, the average major league pitcher is contributing somewhere between 0.20 and 0.24 wins above, say, what Kevin Jarvis or Matt Beech would contribute. With this in mind, here are the low-risk pitchers above their league’s average:

National League
1) Odalis Perez, 0.95
2) Shawn Chacon, 0.94
3) Wil Ledezma, 0.77
4) Ron Villone, 0.69
5) Joe Beimel, 0.64
6) Doug Brocail, 0.63
7) Mark Hendrickson, 0.53
8) Rudy Seanez, 0.51
9) Phil Dumatrait, 0.48
10) Jeremy Affeldt, 0.42
11) Kyle Lohse, 0.41

American League
1) Sidney Ponson, 0.53
2) Jorge Julio, 0.27

The small number of AL low-risk pitchers that have above average WAR totals initially strikes me as odd; however, the fact that the two come in the forms of Sidney Ponson and Jorge Julio makes it even odder! Of the 58 low-risk signings, the NL had 36 to the 22 in the AL, so it was not as if the AL only had six such signings.

I am going to revisit this at season’s end in order to apply the same dollars per win method as in the original article but, as of right now, by evaluating moves based on approximately 40 team games, the above players have been worth the risk.

In the cases of Odalis Perez, Shawn Chacon, and Wil Ledezma, they have really been worth the risk; those three fall into the top 30 of the entire National League.

Tim Keown recently wrote a tremendous article on Maddux in which he discussed his chesslike approach to pitching.  Teammates remarked to Keown that Maddux can watch a seemingly run of the mill swing and deduce, with great accuracy, what will occur over the course of the next few pitches.  This specifically comes in handy with regards to foul balls headed towards their dugout.

Unfortunately, Pitch F/X data was not available during the pinnacle of Maddux’s success; hell, computers were still becoming mainstream back then and I was eight years old.  Still, there are lessons that can still be learned about his approach. 

Maddux Data
Using the available 2007 and 2008 data I decided to find a batter or two that Maddux has faced multiple times and analyze his approach in pitching to them.  Did he utilize the same sequencing?  Did he make adjustments between games?  Did he make adjustments between at-bats in the same game?  Was he able to fully exploit said batter’s weaknesses?

Fortunately, Maddux pitches for the Padres, and Petco Park was one of the original SportVision stadiums. 

I wanted to look at a hitter that Maddux faced multiple times and found him in Bengie Molina: the Padres and Giants are in the same division and Maddux has already faced them twice in 2008.  All of the circled pitches seen in the location charts are the first pitches thrown in each plate appearance.

With regards to pitch classification, Maddux’s pitches each have so much movement that the 2008 algorithm has suggested he throws about eight different pitches. Generally speaking, he throws a two-seam fastball, a changeup, and a cutter that moves a lot like a slider; due to this movement it is frequently categorized as a slider. Though it can be argued it is, in fact, a cutter, I am going to stick with the algorithm in this case because it classifies what the batter sees. Regardless of whether we call it a cutter or a slider, the batter sees a pitch moving similarly to a slider. For the purposes of this article I will call it a “cutslide.”

Understanding Molina
Before getting into the matchups I feel it is important to know a bit about Maddux’s opponent.  Molina does not walk or strikeout much as he generally puts the ball in play more often than not.  Throughout his career he sees about half of his pitches outside the strike zone.  Though he only swings at about 31-33% of these pitches he makes contact upwards of 79% of the time.   He swings at about 70% of the pitches he sees in the strike zone but makes contact around 90% of the time.  Clearly, Molina does not swing and miss much.

Of this contact, the majority comes from grounders and flyballs; in his career he has hit 19% line drives, 37% grounders, and 43% flyballs.

Maddux vs. Molina: 4/11/2007
Early last April, Maddux faced Molina twice, throwing just four pitches in the two plate appearances.  The first, a PA lasting three pitches, resulted in a double.  In the second PA, Molina grounded out on the first pitch.  All four of these pitches were two-seam fastballs and their locations can be seen below:

In the first plate appearance, Maddux started Molina off with a fastball, letter high, resulting in a called strike. He then challenged him on the outside part of the plate; Molina fouled it off. Never one to throw a waste pitch (something I’ll explore next week) Maddux threw an 0-2 fastball towards the inside corner. It came in a bit too high and closer to the plate than he would have liked and Molina lined a double.

Molina adjusted his approach as he is generally not one to swing at the first pitch. The common creed with Maddux is that, since he is deadly accurate and despises wasting pitches, the first pitch you see may be the best one. He abides by the “best pitch is strike one” motto and so by taking the first pitch a batter is usually seceding the ability to be ahead in the count.

Maddux, however, did not make an adjustment between at-bats: His first pitch to Molina the next time they faced off was put in virtually the exact same location as the first pitch from before. Perhaps Molina knew this would happen as he swung at the high two-seamer, grounding out to shortstop in the process. Here is what the movement of these pitches looked like:

Unlike the other matchups seen in this analysis, the charts from this game are separated by plate appearance rather than pitches; he threw the same pitch in both so it is more interesting to see how the PAs differed. Though the fastballs in the first plate appearance differed in location they all seemingly had very similar movement. The lone fastball the second time around slightly differed. Whether or not Maddux held the ball with a different grip or if this movement discrepancy occurred by chance, it resulted in a groundout.
 

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Juan Pierre got a ridiculous contract because he is fast and he’s a .300 hitter.  Plenty of pixels have been lit up discussing why this was a bad idea both before and after the signing, but Mr. Pierre is currently cashing his (rather large) checks.  Sabermetrics has done a good job pointing out where some of the inefficiencies are in talent evaluation, the marketplace, and game strategy.  In doing so, we’ve explained what people are doing that they shouldn’t be doing.  But, there’s not much written on why it is that people persist in these errors.

The reasons have to go beyond a simple lack of knowledge.  Maybe there is a lack of knowledge, but at this point, one would have to be actively ignoring Sabermetrics to not at least have heard its arguments.  Good Sabermetric research and writing is out there and this stuff isn’t a secret.  There has to be something more.  I offer this as a conversation starter.  Why?

A few theories of mine:

1. A structural theory: What is the real goal of a team?  To win a World Series, right?  I suppose it depends on whom you ask.  The owner is in it to make money.  The marketing department is more concerned with how the players on the roster “connect” with the fans (would you sign a player who still hits like crazy, but was an arrogant jerk who might be a cheat?  Not B referring O to N anyone D specific S here… just a hypothetical.)  Some of the players might be more interested in their own stats/perception than the team’s success.  The third base coach is clearly in it so as to minimize the blame on himself.  The GM might need to look like he’s “doing something,” despite the fact that it’s actually a bad move.  Are teams really set up to look for top talent?  Given that there is a “traditionalist” taboo against embracing Sabermetrics, is there a risk that a GM runs in alienating the fan base if he goes too far with it?
2. A psychological theory: People look up to baseball players in some way as a reflection of themselves.  People assign value to traits that they admire and that they wished that they had in their own lives.  The ability to come through in the clutch or the ability to “play through pain” is something that I suppose we would all love to think that we have.  So, we over-value those players that appear to have those traits (no matter how illusory those are).  GMs are humans as well and simply have the same prejudices.

Now, first we need a few good working theories.  Theory can then inform actual research, perhaps research that no one has really gotten into: systematic research on how players are actually perceived by the general public (the closest thing I’ve seen would be something like Tango Tiger’s fan surveys or the Great Clutch project).  So, I come to you, oh Sabermetrically-inclined readers.  Let’s chat about the subject at hand.

What the heck does “hard nosed” (see also: take-no-prisoners, fiery, plucky, gritty, happy, bashful, and Doc) mean?  Certainly the nose is made of soft cartilige and if it ossifies, it is probably a significant medical concern.  Somehow I don’t think that’s what they meant.  I decided to use a little bit of my qualitative analysis skills (I never get to use them here!) to start me off.  I Googled (when did that become a verb?) “hard nosed baseball” and looked to find what came up.  (In professional terms, I did a “content analysis.”)  There were a few major themes that were associated with hard-nose-ed-ness.  (Is that a word?)  Most of them involved a willingness to run into people or objects for the benefit of the team.  This quality is likely helpful in football where running into people is part of how you accomplish your goal (especially on defense), but in baseball?

OK, some of these hard-nosed thingies are obviously helpful.  Getting hit by a pitch puts the batter on first, even though it’s an ouchie.  (In rec-league softball when we were kids, we used to say “Get a hit or get hit.”)  Some of them, like diving for no apparent reason… oh sorry, Derek, didn’t see you over there… don’t do anything except make the player look cooler while the ball is going past him.  (I, too, appreciate a dirty uniform, but I more appreciate a ball in a glove.)  Some of them, like playing every day or playing while hurt, depend on how good you are to begin with.

There was the ever-so-hard-nosed play of sliding hard into second base to take out the shortstop/second baseman who was attempting to turn the double play, crashing into the catcher in order to try to score, and running into a wall/diving to catch a fly ball, even at the risk of injury to oneself.  Apparently, it’s not enough to do a lot of running or throwing or hitting the ball for the team.  To truly prove oneself, there must be some element of actually hitting something with your body.  In the event of a bench-clearing brawl, one must also be prepared to run out there and look menacing.  So, do these hard-nosed players really exist?  And does hard-nosed play really benefit the team?

Well, there’s no data on how often a player barrels into the catcher or how menacing he looks during a brawl.  As far as taking out the catcher goes, there’s a game benefit for the team.  Certainly, if he can turn an out at the plate into a run, that’s going to be a net gain for his team, but we don’t have any way of looking into that one and whether there’s any consistent skill at knocking over the catcher… at least on Retrosheet.  However, we can take a look to see if there really are players who are particularly good at breaking up double plays.

I isolated all situations in which the following happened: With less than two out and a runner on first, a ground ball was hit, fielded by an infielder, and the runner who had been on first was eliminated in some way.  I looked to see whether or not the double play was completed.  I then calculated each runner’s percentage of double plays broken up (admittedly, I have no idea whether he actually did anything to break the play up or not…)  I did this for 2004-2007 and selected only those runners who had been in that position 10 or more times.  I then looked to see if there was any year to year consistency using intra-class correlation.  The result: .04  That doesn’t even qualify as legally drunk, much less any sort of consistency.  If there are players that have this magical ability to break up double plays, they sure aren’t using it year to year. 

(Side note: I re-ran the same analyses, only this time looking at whether or not there were certain batters who had the ability to avoid the double play in the same situation.  The intraclass correlation came in at .47.  There is some repeatable performance in avoiding double plays for batters.  I believe that particular ability is called “speed.”  Moral of the story: if you want to stay out of double plays, don’t look for a hard-nosed player at first.  Look for a fast batter.)

Then there’s the matter of running into walls/diving after balls/leaping into the stands to catch fly balls.  Certainly it happens, and while you get a Web Gem award on Baseball Tonight, you still only get one out for your troubles.  Now, if you make the catch and don’t injure yourself, you get heralded as a wonderful human being.  If you miss the ball and get hurt, you spend two weeks on the DL watching footage of when you missed the ball… and your team doesn’t get the benefit of your services for that time.

Consider for a moment: the average fly ball or line drive that goes for an extra base hit has a WPA of .094 for the offense (2000-2006 numbers).  An out on a fly ball has an average WPA of  .025 for the defense.  So the total WPA swing of making that catch is .119 wins.  (Before we go on, yes, I know, I’m playing really fast and loose with the WPA framework here and there’s leverage to consider, blah blah blah.)  Suppose that you as a hard-nosed gentleman are chasing a fly ball and the wall is fast approaching.  You know that you will end up on the 15-day DL after this jaunt into the wall but you run and jump anyway.  Was that a good idea?  Let’s say you miss 13 games in the process and you’ll have to be replaced by a… well, a replacement level player.  So, over those 13 games (let’s say 4.1 PA per game), there will be roughly 53 PA that you’ll miss.  Let’s assume that you are A-Rod and last year were 10.9 wins over a replacement player in 708 PA, or roughly .0154 wins above replacement per PA.  In the 53 PA you miss, you’d cost your team .816 wins.  Suddenly, that’s not such a good move.

But what if you’re not A-Rod?  When would it make sense to actually jump?  Suppose that you usually get 600 PA per year.  How many wins above replacement should you be below before the jump makes sense?  A little bit of math shows that the number is 1.34 WARP.  Or roughly, Julio Lugo last year.  If you’re a replacement player anyway (0 WARP), jump!  You’ll be replaced by another replacement player, so we won’t lose anything.  Moral of the story: it makes sense to be a hard nosed player if you aren’t all that good of a player to begin with.

But there was one theme that was curiously missing from my content analysis that seems pretty hard-nosed, and seems to have some basis in reality.  We talk about the runner as hard-nosed for breaking up a double play, but what about the poor pivot guy who has to turn the double play?  He usually has a guy barreling down on him when he takes that throw at second base.  I looked at those same potential double play balls as I did a little while ago, and figured out who was the pivot guy (the 2B or the SS who took the throw at second and had to throw to first) and looked to see if there was consistency from year to year in being able to turn the DP.  Intra-class correlation (minimum 25 chances) was .44 (not amazing, but I can live with that).  Sure, that’s not all hard-nose-ed-ness.  There’s some throwing arm in there, but still, there’s probably some ability-to-hang-in-there-itiveness in there as well.  And is it any less hard-nosed to be able to stand in there when a grown man with a running start is aiming to knock you over while you do a job that pretty much makes you defenseless to said attack?  Maybe we’ve found our hard-nosed guys after all.

So, are there hard-nosed players out there.  Yeah, I guess.  Do they make much of a positive difference in their team’s chances?  A wee bit.

Question #1: Has Cliff Lee established a new level of performance?  If so, how much better than his career average should we expect from here on out?  If not, what does he have to do to convince you he’s reached a new level of performance?

Sean Smith: My guess is yes, Lee is a better pitcher now, and as long as he’s healthy should be one of the top 10-15 pitchers in the league, finishing with a 3.50-3.75 ERA.  I would be more inclined to call it a lucky hot start if he was just not having hits fall in (which actually is part of his success) or getting lucky in stranding runners, but a 32-2 K/W ratio makes me take notice.  I have the same feeling about him right now as I did about John Lackey in 2005.  Lackey, after the hot start to his career in 2002 that saw him win game 7 of the series, was an inconsistent, average-ish pitcher, sort of an inning-eater type for 2 years.  Then in 2005, his strikeout rate jumped, and from around may 2005 to his injury this spring, he’s been one hell of a pitcher.

Eric Seidman: Lee isn’t going to pitch like this all year but he could have a good season.  MGL pointed out that his NERC in recent years has been average or below average and, via my Adjusted W-L (which basically measures how often a pitcher had a good game relative to decisions), he pitched more along the lines of a 13-10 season when he actually went 18-5.  He has been lucky with his BABIP based on his percentage of line drives and his FIP implies his ERA should really be closer to 2.01, not 0.96; not to say 2.01 is bad, but it sure isn’t a Gibson-esque 0.96.  Regardless of what happens between now and September, he had a remarkable month of April.  For Pizza’s sake, hopefully he can end up posting above average statistics but I would be willing to put money down that he will not win 20 games, will not sustain a K/BB of 16.0, and will not have an ERA under 3.20 at the end of the season.

Pizza Cutter: Oh sure, bait me with an Indians question.  OK, his luck inidcators are all saying he’s getting really lucky, although his walks are way down (but his strikeouts are about what we would expect of him… hmmmm…).  The Indians do have a philosophy of “just throw the ball in the strike zone.  If the other team hits it, so what.”  Lee’s problem was always giving up too many walks, so maybe that message worked its way into his head and was exactly what he needed to hear.  He won’t keep this up.  But, his best K/BB year was 2005, when he pitched well enough to be 4th in the Cy Young balloting.  If there’s one promising sign, he was never one to give up many line drives (even last year during his “horrible” year, he only had a 15% LD rate) and he’s giving up fewer fly balls.  He’s throwing the fastball more and the change up less, so someone has been tinkering with his pitch selection.  He’s not Bob Gibson, but it looks like the Indians have actually taught him a thing or two.  At least, I really really really hope they have.

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Still missing first-hand accounts, I sought out any former teammates.  Luckily, Jeffrey and I found that Bill Werber, a ten-year veteran of the Red Sox, Athletics, and Reds, was still alive.  Werber, who helped spearhead one of the most underrated infields of all time (Frank McCormick, Lonnie Frey, Bill Werber, Billy Meyers), is currently 99 years old and living in a retirement home in North Carolina. 

I called him this past week in order to conduct an interview about Bucky but, in the end, my fascination split its interests between Bucky and Werber himself; I went from asking questions for the book to just talking to a former MVP-candidate.  It is always important to record these voices since they won’t be with us much longer and so I decided to post portions of the interview transcript here, hoping that you will find some of this as interesting as I did while speaking with him.  The hardest part of this interview was knowing when to chime in with another question; while Werber is still very cognizant it became very hard to tell if he had finished a thought or was still gathering them.

For the most part, you will see direct quotes from Werber himself.  Some of the information was slightly altered to make more sense to those perhaps unfamiliar with names/stories from 1927-1943.

ES: Now, according to what I can see here it appears you were first called up to the major leagues in 1930, with the Yankees.  What can you tell me about your experiences on such a dominant team?

BW: Well, haha, I was actually called up earlier, though I didn’t play at all.  In 1927 I was called up for the first time.  The scout that liked me made me a proposition.  He was a big admirer of Miller Huggins, the Yankees manager at the time, and thought it would be to my benefit to sit on the bench and travel with the team, learning how Miller ran the ballclub.  I was on the team in the summer of 1927 for two to three weeks.  I was lonesome because I lived in a hotel by myself, and the ballplayers had little time for a college kid.  After all, they were in a pennant chase.  They would push me out of the batting cage, and take over for me at shortstop in fielding practice.  This made me very unhappy.  I went to see Ed Barrow, the Yankees general manager, and told him “Mr. Barrow, this is not of any benefit to me.  I should be taking batting practice, running, fielding grounders, but I never get the chance.”  He tried to talk me out of it but I had made up my mind.

ES: What can you tell me about that 1927 team?  You said they didn’t necessarily acknowledge you, but Ruth, Gehrig, what were these guys like?

BW: They were, well, a… rambunctious… crew.  They won the AL pennant by ten to twelve games that year and they were called, well the writers called them, Murderer’s Row.  Murderer’s Row was their nickname.  They also beat the Pirates four straight to win the world series.

ES: Now in 1934, you did something now considered a form of betrayal, in going from the Yankees to the Red Sox.  How did this happen?

BW: I was sold to the Red Sox in the early part of the 1934 season.  In Spring Training I hit around .350 and thought the job was mine, but Joe McCarthy, the Yankees manager, sold me, Dusty Rhodes, George Pipgras, and Henry Johnson to the Red Sox.  I came over to play shortstop and Bucky Walters was already there at third base.  Later on, Bucky Harris, the Red Sox manager, bought Lyn Lary.  Lyn took my spot at shortstop and I ended up taking Bucky’s spot at third base.  At this point they sent Bucky to Philadelphia, where Jimmy Wilson turned him into a pitcher.  Joe Judge, our first baseman in Boston, used to complain that Bucky and I threw to first too hard.  He used to say “Hey, don’t throw the ball so damn hard!”

ES: The next time you and Bucky played together would not be until 1939 when both of you were part of a tremendous Reds team.  How did you come to play for Cincinnati?

BW: I held out all of the spring in 1939.  I wasn’t with the Reds but rather I was playing third base for the scrub team at the University of Maryland.  I held out until a couple of days before the Reds broke spring training.  I didn’t know anybody there except for Bucky Walters, and he and I weren’t very close.  We were friendly but we weren’t extremely close.  Once the team came north to play Spring Training exhibition games against the Red Sox I joined the team.

ES: Now, going back, in 1934-

BW: -in 1934, I played third base for the Red Sox and hit .321 with 67 rbis.  I was considered by Ed Barrow, general manager of the Yankees, to be the best player in the entire American League.  Unfortunately, I injured my toe that year and was never the same again.

ES: How did you injure your toe?

BW: I was frustrated by Lefty Grove and so I kicked a bucket full of Florida water, with a sponge in it.  I fractured my big toe and developed a spur.  I also had a calcium block form on the interior part of the big toe joint.

ES: Was it ever fixed?

BW: Well, I went to see Dr. George Bennett, at Hopkins Medical Center in Maryland.  He shaved the calcium block off and removed the spur.  This was in the winter of 1935.  I was never the same ballplayer following the surgery that I was before.  I played in discomfort for seven more major league seasons.  In 1942, I played third base for the Giants.

ES: Yeah, it seems that you didn’t play the whole year either.  How did you come to be on the Giants?

BW: I had retired after 1941, telling Mr. Giles (Warren), general manager of the Reds, that I was in a lot of pain and was going to retire.  He called me one day while I was in Washington, working out of my father’s office, and said “Bill, I know you’re retired, but three clubs are interested in your services.”  I asked him which and he told me the Giants, Pirates, and Cubs.  “What are you selling me for?” I asked.  He told me he was selling me for $35,000 and added that he would give me 10% if I accepted.  Now, 10% of 35,000 is 3,500, and in 1942, 3,500 is a lot of money!  “Sell me to the Giants,” I said.  “If I sell you and you change your mind, will you give me the 3,500 back?” Giles asked me.  I told him of course I would.

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I took my data base of all plate appearances from 2000-2007 (thanks Retrosheet!) and looked for the answer to that question.  I looked at how the ball-and-strike count progressed in each plate appearance, specifically whether the strike had been recorded by way of a foul ball or a swinging strike or (since I was in the neighborhood anyway) a called strike.  Of course, anything that produces a strike is bad news for the batter, but perhaps not all strikes are created equal.  A foul ball can only produce a strike if the count before the pitch had 0 or 1 strikes, so I looked only at those pitches (I’ll get to 2 strike fouls in a minute).  That left eight possible counts in which a foul ball could have produced a strike (0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 3-0, 0-1, 1-1, 2-1, 3-1).  I looked at all cases in which any strike had been produced whether by foul ball, swinging strike, or called strike and the resulting OBP of those plate appearances.  Before starting, I took a look at the expected OBP that would result from the batter/pitcher matchup in play (using the odds ratio method, since OBP is a probability number) for the purposes of making sure that my groups were roughly equal.  I used seasonal OBP’s as my baseline.

Let me show what I did by using an example.  I took a look at all plate appearances in which the first pitch (a 0-0 count)  ended up as a strike on the batter (so, now a 0-1 count.)  I tallied up how that strike managed to get there, so that it created three “baskets” of plate appearances (called, swinging, foul).  I should also note that I only used plate appearances in which a batter with 250+ PA in that season faced a pitcher with 250+ BF in that season.  First, to make sure that the baskets were roughly equal (batters/pitchers who swing at/induce more swinging strikes might have higher/lower OBP’s/OBP’s allowed than batters/pitchers who… ah you know what I’m getting at.)  The overall expected OBP for the three groups were called strikes: .332, foul balls: .329, and swinging strikes: .326.  This pattern actually played itself out pretty consistently.  The overall expected OBP for those who took a called first pitch strike was usually a little higher than those who fouled off the first pitch which was higher still than those who swung and missed.  However, the differences were never massively huge and at their greatest, there was a spread of about 7 or 8 points among the three groups.

(Methodological note: A plate appearance might be represented in two different “baskets” here.  For example, a batter who takes a called first strike pitch, then two balls, then fouls off strike two would be in the 0-0 called bin and the 2-1 foul bin.  Such is life.)

What then came of those plate appearances with the first strike?  The actual OBP for the three groups were:

• Called strike: .287
• Foul ball: .295
• Swinging strike: .263

The most important pitch for a pitcher is strike one, but how he does it is worth 32 points of OBP!  A ball would certainly be a better outcome for a batter (plate apperances with a 1-0 count have an OBP of .385), but if he’s going to have a strike against him, he’s much better off if he swings and fouls the ball off than if he swings and misses.  I went through and did the same analysis for all of the other eight counts in question.  The results:

count                     if called   if foul   if swinging
0-0                         .287        .295     .263
1-0                         .321        .329      .308
2-0                         .404        .407      .397
3-0                         .585        .596      .597

0-1                        .219         .233      .199
1-1                        .248         .256      .227
2-1                        .315         .322      .287
3-1                        .458        .486      .442

If the batter swings, the simple act of making contact and hitting it foul signals a much better outcome for him, often on the order of 20-40 points worth of OBP, even though the result of that swing (a strike on the scoreboard) is the same.  The only notable exception is a swinging strike on a 3-0 is a little better than a foul ball.  At 3-0, the batter is in a good position no matter what he does.  Then there’s the matter of called strikes.  A called strike is consistently better than a swinging strike, but worse than a foul ball, although usually closer to the foul ball.  A strike is not a strike is not a strike.  You ignored the poor foul ball all this time, but it’s been trying to send you a message.  It’s important to pay attention to not only what the count is, but how those strikes got there. 

What of two-strike foul balls?  The rules, of course, change and a foul ball at this point doesn’t affect the count.  A swinging strike or a called strike on a 2-2 pitch will result in a .000 OBP.  Does fouling off a two-strike pitch increase the chances that a batter will get on base?  What about spoiling multiple two-strike pitches?  In part one of the series, we saw that two-strike foul balls (at a seasonal level) were generally associated with different types of hitting outcomes (more singles, fewer HR), but weren’t really connected to OBP.  Does that finding still hold?

Again, I isolated all plate appearances in which there was at some point a count of 0-2 or 1-2 or 2-2 or 3-2.  I then counted up some foul balls that happened after that point.  I struggled with exactly how to compare apples-to-apples in this case.  Foul balls hit during the count in question, (i.e., foul balls only when the count was 1-2) solves the confound that different counts have different expected OBPs.  However, it doesn’t account for the fact that the mindset might be not so much focused on the count, but on spoiling as many pitches as possible and waiting out the balls and/or waiting for a good pitch to hit.  In that case, the better way to look at it would be foul balls from that point onward after that count had been reached.  (So, from the point of having a 1-2 count, if a batter fouled one off, took a ball, then fouled two more off on 2-2, that would be three fouls.)  I coded things the latter way (split it into zero fouls, one, two, and three-plus).  For fun, I did it the other way (not shown here), and the base conclusions didn’t really change.  Again, I first checked for the expected OBP based on the batter/pitcher match-up, and the differences were negligible.

Count    0 fouls   1 foul   2 fouls   3+ fouls
0-2        .209       .264    .231       .253
1-2        .235       .266     .279       .282
2-2        .307       .313     .314       .312
3-2        .468       .467     .451       .482

If the batter is fouling off two-strike pitches after being behind in the count, it means that he’s more likely to get on base (even though that effect is not linear with more fouls predicting higher OBP).  But after the count evens, there’s no particular advantage to fouling off a lot of pitches.  Seems like that even if the batter is behind in the count, if he’s still at least making contact, it’s a good sign.  However, the effects don’t seem to grow by huge margins when the batter spoils multiple pitches.  Talk of the pitcher having to “show” the batter extra pitches and this being a net gain for the batter doesn’t seem to hold water, at least as far as this particular batter being able to get on base in this particular at bat.  A lot of foul balls do, however, extend the pitcher’s pitch count, which might be helpful later in the game.  But, too often, commentators say that the batter is having “a good at-bat” if he fouls off a lot of 2-2 and 3-2 pitches.  In fact, he’s not likely to be having a better or worse at bat in terms of his result than if he hadn’t fouled those pitches off.

So, what have we learned in our examination of the foul ball?  First off, they matter.  A foul ball may count as a strike, but that’s not totally fair.  If it were just another strike, there wouldn’t be such major discrepancies between foul balls and called and/or swinging strikes.  It’s odd because a case can be made that the foul ball is something that’s positive for both the pitcher (it counts as a strike, and strikes are good) and for the batter (it’s not as damaging as other strikes).  A batter is better off if he collects balls, or perhaps home runs, and a pitcher is better off if the batter can’t touch his stuff at all.  But, it speaks to the importance of getting beyond simply counting balls and strikes.  In order to really understand a batter, a pitcher, or a plate appearance, it’s important to know how those strikes got there.  And you thought it was just a souvenir.