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The 2011 MLB Playoffs is coming to a close. One, maybe two game remain. Which team wins will come down to which team plays the smallest ball, gets the clutchest hits, and whose manager makes the shrewdest moves.
Inevitably, some of those moves will be based on hitter vs pitcher match ups. We'll hear that Ian Kinsler is 0 for 8 in his career against Octavio Dotel. So, we'll expect Dotel to face Kinsler in any high leverage situations late in games. Should we expect Dotel to continue to retire Kinsler? Should we expect Kinsler to go 0 for 9 against Dotel? 0 for 10? 0 for 20? 0 for 50?
This blog post was brought about by my reading this article by Tom Tango. In the comments section there is a link to this article by Dan Fox. Both articles are good reads and written by much smarter and better writers than I - so read them.
In the second article, Dan Fox posts a table with the most statistically significant batter owning pitcher match ups from 2003 to 2005. These 10 batters combined to go 132 for 296 for a .446 batting average against their ******* the pitchers they faced.
If the narrative is true, that a hitter who hits .446 against a pitcher will be likely to continue to succeed against that pitcher, then we should be able to look back and see continued above average performance. So, do we?
Uh...no. The same hitter vs pitcher matchups resulted in an 18 for 77 performance from 2006 onwards. That's a .234 batting average.
Hitter vs pitcher match ups are just not statistically relevant sample sizes.
Here are the links to the baseball-reference hitter vs pitcher match ups I looked up.
Jeter vs Lopez
Wilson vs Sheets
Helton vs Perez
Chavez vs Moyer
Rollins vs Pavano
Kielty vs Buehrle
Byrnes vs Buehrle
Walker vs Clemens
Nixon vs Halladay
Damon vs Colon
*Click the link to click the links, see the awesomely (and obvious) embedded video and find out what lies behind those asterisks just above the chart.
Pitcher A and batter B might have faced each other 20 or 30 times last year in AAA ball. But that is not just ignored, it is denied by announcers who say they never faced each other before.
It doesnt mean much, even if the sample is small. THese are amazing major league hitters, if you make a bad pitch, they can crush it no matter how poorly they've done in the past. A hitter can be 0 for 50 but if that pitcher makes a mistake, the guy can hit it in the seats.
plenty of baseball "experts" cited past hitter/pitcher matchups during the 2012 playoffs. I recorded as many of these as a I found on Twitter (I did not record the statements made on air, since I'd have no linkable proof that the statements were made) and tracked the outcomes during the playoffs.
Here are the statements for hitters who had had success against the pitchers they were facing:
We've known ever since Intro to Prob and Stats that past performance does not indicate future results. We also know that the sacrifice bunt is a stupid and useless strategy and that hitter "protection" is only a fantasy. Now we must find a way to convince all managers and coaches that we know more about the game than they do.
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