Lee has a tremendous variety of movement in his pitches. He has three pitches that tail away from righties (fourseam, twoseam, changeup) and a nasty curveball with a ton of movement. For most pitchers this would be plenty; but Cliff Lee is not like most pitchers. He also packs a cutter with as much horizontal movement as some sliders.

We can see this with the following graph, which is from the catcher’s perspective (same with all following graphs):

CU=curveball, FC=cutter, FF=fourseam, FT=twoseam, CH=changeup. The black box represents the strikezone and has the average pitch locations for each pitch.

Looking at a pitcher’s entire repertoire like this is useful, but it can be more interesting to look at pitches individually when it comes to pitchers like Lee.

Against righties his location is pretty varied with the fourseam. He mainly locates the pitch middle-away, but often goes up and in too. Against lefties, he consistently pounds the outer half.

Against righties he primarily throws the twoseam pitch up and away, which explains why he has a high flyball rate on a pitch typically associated with groundballs. Against lefties the pitch is pretty much thrown low and over the middle of the plate.

Against righties the pitch is a real weapon; the cutter results in many whiffs and a solid amount of groundballs. Against lefties the pitch isn’t as remarkable, but still solid. His location against lefties with the cutter is very similar to his location with his fourseamer against lefties.

His location against righties and lefties is pretty much the same, though he does backdoor the pitch occasionally to righties. He pretty much only throws his curve late in counts for strikeouts.

Only one graph here because he only threw 20 changeups to lefties the entire year, so I’m just going to ignore those. According to Fangraphs pitch run values, his changeup was his most effective pitch this year. And you can see why; he was great and locating the pitch down and away.

*all data and tables are from Joe Lefkowitz’ site.

*This article was originally posted on www.pendingpinstripes.net

I am a big fan of graphs and baseball. Fangraphs made me excited because putting complex data into reasonably easy to understand graphs helps open up sabermetrics to more fans. I’m a big fan of statistical analysis, but after a while, a table full of numbers just starts running together and stops making sense. That’s what makes graphs such an effective tool.

I’ve dabbled in graphs myself. When people were creating the WAR graphs to compare hall of famers, I made a sample graph showing cumulative WAR by age on Tom Tango’s Book Blog:

(click for a larger image)

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For the first time ever in the divisional era, 1 division has managed to run the table against the other two. Barring the Royals taking 3 of 4 from Tampa over the weekend, there won’t be a single team in the American League who will have put together a winning record against the AL East.

Since 2007, only 8 teams in the American league have been able to put together a winning record against the AL East, (LAA 3 times, OAK twice, TEX, DET and SEA once). This season, as things currently stand, the Central and West divisions have combined to go 149 – 198 (.429%) winning percentage against the AL East, a record comparable to the Cleveland Indians or the Washington Nationals.

What’s worse, is that the AL East will end again with the team that has either the worst, or second worst record in the American League (assuming Buck Showalter doesn’t phone it in this weekend), but looking deeper into their divisional performance, how bad exactly is the AL East’s punching bag?

(Record, Winning Percentage, % Diff from total)
2010 Orioles: Non-AL East Record (39-47*, .453, +.054), 4 games at home v. Detroit left
2009 Orioles: Non-AL East Record (40-50, .444, +.049)
2008 Orioles: Non-AL East Record (46-43, .516, +.095)

AVERAGE % Diff = +.066, or 10.7 Wins

And the 4th place Jays?

2010 Blue Jays: Non-AL East Record (43-43*, .500, -.019), 4 games in Minnesota left
2009 Blue Jays: Non-AL East Record (49-41, .544, +.081)
2008 Blue Jays: Non-AL East Record (49-41, .544, +.013)

AVERAGE % Diff = +.025, or 4 Wins

This means, on average, even the worst that the AL East has to offer, averages almost 5% points higher against non-divisional foes, or roughly 7 wins better across a 162 game season. How much are those 7 wins worth? If you’re Tampa, obviously zero since the only way to fill the ballpark there is to give away 20,000 tickets, but to a team like Seattle or Toronto (as highlighted above), the 2009 Jays managed 75 wins at 23,162 fans a game, whereas the 2008 version of 86 wins averaged 29,626. Obviously its a very rudimentary look at attendance and I’m ignoring plenty of factors, but the fact is and has always been that outside of Tampa Bay, people will inevitably jump on the bandwagons and go to see winning teams win ballgames. The point I’d like to be making here is the financial impact of regional divisional slotting, and if you take the leap with me, obviously the analysis will have a more profound impact.

For comparison purposes, lets look at the AL CENTRAL 4th and 5th place finishers

2010 Kansas City: Non-AL Central Record (36-50*, .418, +.007), 4 games at home v. Tampa left
2009 Kansas City: Non-AL Central Record (33-57, .367, -.034)
2008 Detroit: Non-AL Central Record (47-43*, .522, +.065), 13-5 in interleague games

2010 Cleveland: Non-AL Central Record (33-55, .389, -.039)
2009 Cleveland: Non-AL Central Record (33-55, .389, -.012)
2008 Kansas City: Non-AL Central Record (44-46*, .489, +.025). 13-5 in interleague games

AVERAGE % Diff = .002, or +.4 Wins

The 2008 figures are both skewed in the positive directions due to AL Central success during interleague play, getting to play the even weaker NL West in the majority of their IL games, and zero games against that division’s winner (84-78 Dodgers), so discounting those games, the result is:

AVERAGE % Diff = -.015 or -2.7 Wins

Does the AL East really cost a team 7-10 Wins a season like it has the Orioles? Probably not, there are plenty of other factors that go into a teams eventual W-L, but traditional Strength of Schedule metrics that value the winning % of your opponents, or Runs Scored/Runs Allowed Differentials often don’t capture the simple facts that your record and team stats will be positively influenced by facing the Royals 18 times a season. Who knows, maybe the 2010 Blue Jays, who lead the majors in slugging and home runs, could’ve competed this season in another division where its young pitching staff wasn’t exposed to the three highest scoring teams in the league (NY Boston Tampa) for 54 games? Under this current alignment, we can never be too sure.

On the positive, at least the divisions regionally make sense in their current form, unlike football. I’m sorry, putting Miami in the AFC EAST, Baltimore in the AFC NORTH, and Indianapolis is in the AFC SOUTH makes about as much sense as the BCS national championship formula.

Of 132 starting pitchers that have thrown at least 100 innings this season, Brewers’ right-hander Yovani Gallardo has the third lowest O-Swing% in the majors at 24.8%.  That means opposing hitters swing at 24.8% of his pitches that are outside the strike zone.

Even Nick Blackburn and Brian Bannister get more swings at pitches outside the zone.

Common sense suggests the better a pitcher’s repertoire, the more hitters will chase bad pitches.  Therefore, we would expect Yovani Gallardo to have below-average stuff and a lower strikeout rate because he gets fewer hitters to chase bad pitches.

That is, we would expect that to be the case if we merely looked at Gallardo’s O-Swing% in a vacuum.

As it turns out, Gallardo gets very few hitters to swing at pitches outside the zone because hitters rarely swing in general with Gallardo on the mound.  His 40.8% swing rate is the fourth lowest in the majors (min. 100 innings).  Not only that, but hitters also do not make contact often with his pitches when they do swing – as evidenced by his 79.6% contact percentage and 8.3% swinging-strike percentage.

We can infer from these numbers that hitters flat-out do not see Gallardo’s pitches very well from the mound.  Hitters do not swing often – and when they do, they do not make much contact.

In short, Gallardo has well above-average stuff.  His 92-94 MPH fastball is a plus-pitch, and his spike curve can be deadly when he is not spiking it before it reaches the plate.  Moreover, Gallardo has developed a slider, which is arguably becoming his best pitch.

So, how can Yovani Gallardo transform himself from a top-tier #2 pitcher to a full-fledged ace?

The answer appears to be simple.  Throw more strikes.

Of the starting pitchers that have thrown at least 100 innings in 2010, Yovani Gallardo throws the 7th fewest balls in the strike zone. (Livan Hernandez is predictably number one).  That high-percentage of balls outside the strike zone would be acceptable, but as we have established earlier, Gallardo does not induce many swings outside the zone.

That obviously leads to higher walk rates, higher pitch counts, and lower innings totals.  Those are all things that must change for Yovani to be a true ace in Major League Baseball.

Many of you are likely thinking: “Of course Gallardo should throw more strikes. That is an obvious statement.”

Not necessarily.

Some pitchers, such as Livan Hernandez and Jamie Moyer, live on throwing balls outside the strike zone.  They do not have good enough “stuff” to live by throwing strikes.  They have contact percentages north of 92% on balls inside the zone, so they bait hitters and get them to swing at poor pitches.  Both of them have literally made a career avoiding the strike zone

Gallardo is not that type of pitcher.  It seems opposing hitters have decided their best chance to reach base is to actually not swing at all, merely hoping the upcoming pitch is a ball – which it is 57.4% of the time.  That accounts for the high pitch counts, the low walk totals, and the low inning totals.

The only worry about Gallardo throwing more strikes is that more balls would then be put in play, which may not be a positive outcome with Milwaukee’s below-average defense.  It could effectively be argued that Gallardo is better suited to stick to walks and strikeouts – though the Brewers’ front office should work to solidify the defense this winter.

Throwing more strikes would lower the pitch counts, lower the walk rates, and increase the number of innings pitched without sacrificing production on the mound.  Opposing hitters do not make much contact whether or not Gallardo throws the ball in the strike zone, so he may as well cut the walk rate and work in the strike zone much more often.

His development of a slider should aid that mission.  That spike curveball cannot be thrown consistently for strikes, but his new slider (sometimes cutter) can be thrown for a strike on any count.

Perhaps that is the missing piece that can help Yovani Gallardo transform himself into a bona fide ace for the Brewers.  Or perhaps the right-hander simply needs to make a conscious effort to not nibble.

Whatever the case may be, everyone certainly knows the Brewers organization could certainly use an ace.  Milwaukee’s success in 2011 may hinge on whether or not Gallardo is able to take the next step in his development – which seems to be consistently throwing more strikes in every start.

Adam Wainwright’s strikeout rates keep increasing. In over 400 innings in AA and AAA during his age 21-23 seasons, his strikeout rate was 7.8 per nine innings. When he was elevated to the majors in 2006 as a relief pitcher his strikeout rate took an expected jump to 8.64 K/9. At the time he was throwing his curveball 25.9% of his pitches. A return to starting the following year led to a decrease in both his curveball use (18.6% in 2007 and 17.9% in 2008) and his strikeout rate (6.06 K/9 in 2007 and 6.20 K/9 in 2008).

In 2009, Wainwright made a change in his pitch selection, reverting back to the curveball percentages from his bullpen tenure. The increase in curveball use (24.0% in 2009) increased his strikeouts per nine to 8.19 and turned him from an above-average pitcher (3.90 and 3.78 FIP in 2007 and 2008, respectively) to a Cy Young contender (3.11 FIP). The increased use of the curveball in 2009 also increased its effectiveness, doubling to 2.71 wCB/C. The effectiveness on his slider tripled. Unfortunately, his fastball decreased in effectiveness, going from essentially average to -.75 wFB/C.

In 2010, Wainwright has taken his curveball use to another level, increasing to 28.5% of his pitches and his strikeout rate to 8.26 K/9 and lowering his FIP to 2.86. He has not sacrificed control, lowering his walk rate to 2.21 BB/9. His curveball and slider, which may be more of a cutter, have been slightly less effective, but still very useful pitches. The significant change has occurred in the effectiveness of his fastball. Wainwright has decreased the number of fastballs thrown to a career low 46.5% of pitches. With this decrease has come a drastic increase in the effectiveness of the fastball without changing the velocity, moving to 1.00 wFB/C from last year’s total of -0.75 wFB/C.

Also of note, increasing his strikeouts has not affected his efficiency, with 15.7 P/IP in 2007, 14.8 P/IP in 2008, 15.5 P/IP in 2009 and a career low 14.6 P/IP in 2010.

Wainwright has remained effective this season throwing the third highest percentage of curveballs of any pitcher. (Only Wandy Rodriguez and Gio Gonzalez have thrown a greater percentage of curveballs this year.) When you have the curve he has, you can’t blame him. The consequence, whether inteneded or not, is a sea change in the effectiveness of his fastball.  Another Cy Young-caliber season at a bargain price for the Cardinals.

Earlier in the year I observed that CC was getting significantly more groundballs than earlier in his career. At this time we can see that he has maintained this new approach throughout the year (via fangraphs):

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Over the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of debate about the value of home field advantage in baseball. The discussion was crystallized most recently when the Yankees rested key bullpen members in their first place showdown against the Rays, but it has really be going on since the advent of the Wild Card.

Yesterday, we wondered about the value of finishing first from an accomplishment perspective, but ultimately, that is a very intangible way of looking at the question. At SI.com, Joe Seehan looked at home field advantage from a competitive standpoint and came to the conclusion that it really wasn’t an advantage at all. According to Sheehan’s research, the number one seed has advanced to the World Series in only eight of 24 chances since 1998, when the current playoff format was established. What’s more, over that span, the home team has only gone 45-39 in all post season series, according to Sheehan. In other words, there really isn’t a home field advantage in baseball during the postseason.

There is at least one more vantage point from which to consider this question, and it could very well be the most important: economics.

In the post season, gate revenue (i.e., attendance) is divided between the players and hosting team using the following format:

• Players: 60% of gate receipts from first three games of LDS and first four games of LCS and World Series; no contribution from other games.
• Home team: 40%* of gate receipts from first three games of LDS and first four games of LCS and World Series; 100% of gate receipts from all other games.

*A small percentage (approximately 1.5%) of LDS gate receipts goes to the umpires, while 15% of LCS and World Series gate receipts go to MLB.

On the face of it, there seems to be an economic advantage to having home field. But, is it real, and if so, how significant is it?

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Again looking at leaderboards, I noticed that only one of the top 10 hitters by batting average has fewer than 10 home runs; that would be your 2009 American League MVP, Joe Mauer.

Mauer is hitting .324 through 127 games and, barring a disaster to end the season, will finish as a 5-WAR player.  It’s a far cry from his 8-win 2009 season (which no one could reasonably expect him to repeat), and just looking at his lines across the two seasons, it’s not hard to see where the difference is.

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Since 1994, when Major League Baseball converted to three divisions and expanded its playoff system to four teams per league, the format has been a mixed blessing.  Good teams that didn’t win their division would qualify for the playoffs as a wild card team, and the expansion of two more playoff teams per league meant that more fans could root for their teams to make the playoffs.  Gone were the days of a make-or-break pennant race, as the second-best team in the division didn’t make the playoffs. 

While I am not arguing that this system is better than what was done in the past, our current format is not the most optimal way MLB should have the playoffs structured, and I propose an alternative.  First, I would like to review what I feel is wrong with the current system:

Problem #1: Teams are not incentivized to get the top seed.

The reward of having the league’s best record means little if a team knows they’re making the playoffs.  For example, let’s say it is the last day of the regular season and a team is either tied for the division lead or for the best record, but if it loses the last game it will be the wild card team or the second seed.  What incentive is there to win that game?  At the risk of overusing them, a manager is unlikely to use an ace on two- or three-days rest, or his closer for two or three innings.  In other words, there is no urgency for teams as to where they’re seeded in the playoffs. Regardless of who wins the division, both teams should make the playoffs.

Problem #2:  Home field advantage is not much of an advantage.

Since 1995, home playoff teams have won two-thirds of NFL games, 65% of NBA games, but only 54.6% of MLB games.  (Incidentally, home teams won 54.1% of regular season MLB games during the same period.)

Problem #3:  Wild card teams have performed just as well – if not better than – the division winners in the playoffs.

Nine of the thirty pennant winners have been wild card teams.  Given that wild card teams do not have home field advantage in either the division series or the LCS, this shows that the current system does not put wild card teams at much of a disadvantage.

Simply put, the current “balanced” playoff system was easy to implement  and simple on the schedule makers – the higher seed gets home field advantage over the lower seed.  While there has been talk of different ways of unbalancing this, not much has changed, although there is talk of changing the Division Series to a best-of-seven series.

My proposal, which improves upon the issues mentioned above and makes for more exciting pennant races and playoff games, is as follows:

I propose that MLB adds a second wild card team to both leagues, and that both wild card teams in each league play a one-game play-in game the day after the regular season ends to determine the fourth seed.  The top-seeded team in each league – based on the regular season record – would then play the four seed in a best-of-five Division Series.

This change eliminates the problems listed above.  Teams would now have an incentive both to 1) try for the top seed and 2) avoid being a wild card.  Top seeds are given a big advantage in this scenario because they will face the winner of the playoff game that will most likely have used their ace in either that game or a pivotal last game of the season, and wouldn’t be able to use him again until possibly Game 3 of a five-game Division Series.  This comes at a great detriment to the wild card teams and more than makes up for the “advantage” of home field for the top seed.

Taking this year’s AL East race as an example, if both the Yankees and Rays are tied going into the last game of the season knowing they’re both making the playoffs, there is little incentive for either manager to push their players that last day.  But if either team knew that the second-place team would, say, face Boston in a one-game playoff, then this would greatly change managerial decisions that last day of the season.

Given that both proposed one-game playoffs would only last one day, scheduling the playoffs will not make it much of a burden on the other playoff games.  As we saw with the Chicago-Detroit game last year, one-game playoffs are exciting to watch and would be a great opening to the MLB playoff season.

We’ve all heard a broadcaster comment on the impending doom of a leadoff walk and yet they fail to seem to apply the same sort of fateful outcome for a single. I thought it would be interesting to find the outcomes of each of the ways a player can leadoff an inning by getting on first base and see if it affects whether or not the runner goes on to score. I took the retrosheet data sine 1952 (but not including this year) that I have as a MySQL database and created a quick python script to determine these results. I took it further and examined if the breakdown were any different in late game situations, as I’m always hearing “You never want to walk the leadoff batter but especially late in close ball games”. I was also curious if even in general more solitary runs get manufactured once a leadoff runner gets on base in late game situations.

Total times batter lead off an inning by getting to first: 508312
Total times runner scored: 192150

So a leadoff batter who starts on first base scores 37.80% percent of the time, here is the breakdown via the means they get aboard

Any inning

Single      325455 Scored 122662   37.69%
Walk        150570 Scored  57189   37.98%
HBP          11865 Scored   4600   38.77%
Error        19260 Scored   7270   37.74%
Strikeout     1007 Scored    375   37.24%
Catcher's Int. 155 Scored     54   34.84%
Totals      508312 Scored 192150   37.80%

So it appears as though it’s not much of a statistically significant difference between the walk and the single. The HBP numbers seems to be a bit of an outlier, I’m wondering if that is just sample size or if such an outcome rattles the pitcher to the point of that much more runs being produced.

Lets now examine the breakdown based upon the stage of the game.

6th inning or earlier

Single      217421 Scored  83243 38.29%
Walk        100587 Scored  38798 38.57%
HBP           7879 Scored   3070 38.96%
Error        12778 Scored   4880 38.19%
Strikeout      645 Scored    244 37.83%
Catcher's Int. 107 Scored     36 33.64%
Totals      339417 Scored 130271 38.38%

7th inning or later

Single     108034 Scored 39419 36.49%
Walk        49983 Scored 18391 36.79%
HBP          3986 Scored  1530 38.38%
Error        6482 Scored  2390 36.97%
Strikeout     362 Scored   131 36.19%
Catcher's Int. 48 Scored    18 37.50%
Totals     168895 Scored 61879 36.64%

Interesting how 1.74% more leadoff runners reaching first score in the earlier innings.  Is this a comment on the failure of manufacturing runs or pitching being different in the later stages of the game?  Perhaps a deeper look based upon “close game situations” is in order for that.