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If I am off logic with this, I would welcome an explanation.
If batting average is a function of linedrive frequency, and the better batters hit linedrives with greater frequency, then we have established that there is such a thing as an ability to hit linedrives.
It then follows that in those years where a pitcher's ba yielded rises, the percentage of linedrives yielded also must have risen.
But....
By the McCracken model, pitchers are only responsible for those linedrives which clear the fence, and the frequency of other linedrives yielded is viewed as a random variable. That would suggest that there is no such thing as an ability to prevent the hitting of linedrives.
That does not make sense to me. If doing something with great frequency is an ability, then preventing it from happening would also have to be an ability.
Conclusion...there is some flaw in the McCracken model. It annoys me greatly that I have not figured out the specifics of it, but there has to be a flaw. The ability to prevent linedrives must exist, it just hasn't been found in the stats yet.
If I am off logic with this, I would welcome an explanation.
If batting average is a function of linedrive frequency, and the better batters hit linedrives with greater frequency, then we have established that there is such a thing as an ability to hit linedrives.
It then follows that in those years where a pitcher's ba yielded rises, the percentage of linedrives yielded also must have risen.
But....
By the McCracken model, pitchers are only responsible for those linedrives which clear the fence, and the frequency of other linedrives yielded is viewed as a random variable. That would suggest that there is no such thing as an ability to prevent the hitting of linedrives.
That does not make sense to me. If doing something with great frequency is an ability, then preventing it from happening would also have to be an ability.
Conclusion...there is some flaw in the McCracken model. It annoys me greatly that I have not figured out the specifics of it, but there has to be a flaw. The ability to prevent linedrives must exist, it just hasn't been found in the stats yet.
There's A LOT of gold in there but I'll highlight some of the goldiest gold.
Quote:
The pitchers who are the best at preventing hits on balls in play one year are often the worst at it the next. In 1998, Greg Maddux had one of the best rates in baseball, then in 1999 he had one of the worst. In 2000, he had one of the better ones again. In 1999, Pedro Martinez had one of the worst; in 2000, he had the best. This happens a lot.
*****
You can better predict a pitcher's hits per balls in play from the rate of the rest of the pitcher's team than from the pitcher's own rate.
*****
Now, let's suppose we're playing Lob-League and the pitcher lobs one right in the batter's wheelhouse, but the batter pops it up to the shortstop. Who deserves credit for the pop-up? The blame argument would indicate that the pitcher deserves credit for inducing a pop-up despite the fact that all he did was lob the ball over the plate. No credit or blame would belong to the batter who popped up the pitch.
A more relevant MLB example might be the Home Run Derby at the All-Star festivities. I encourage you to watch next year's contest, or, if you have it, a videotape of past contests. Watch for batted balls that would clearly be outs. The pitcher is trying to give up home runs, so does he deserve credit for a pop-up?
In MLB, a pitch could result in a pop-up or a line drive. It all depends on what the batter does with it. I think the conventional wisdom on the dynamic between pitcher and batter may be slightly inaccurate.
Now Voros proposed this eons ago (in sabermetric years) in 2000, the article is from 2001 and information on batted ball type wasn't nearly as accessible back then. His ultimate conclusion wasn't that pitchers had no control over BABIP it was 'the conventional wisdom on the dynamic between pitcher and batter may be slightly inaccurate'. He was quite accurate with that statement.
We now know that pitchers do have some influence on BABIP as the result of batted ball type.
As you noted line drives have the highest BABIP (.750ish) while ground balls (.240ish) fly balls (.140ish), and infield fly balls (miniscule) have less.
Fly ball pitchers have slightly lower BABIPs than ground ball pitchers and there is no such thing as a line drive pitcher because a line drive pitcher would get pummeled and not last long in the league. So there is some selection bias in that every major league pitcher has a minimum ability to prevent line drives.
Lets take a look at batted ball rates
This is batted ball data from 2010 taken from Fangraphs.
It is easy to see that ground balls and fly balls are the two most frequent types of balls in play but with pretty large ranges. Line drives (and infield fly balls) are much less frequent and with smaller ranges. The average (I just averaged the averages which isn't correct but will get us in the neighborhood) rates for 2010 are:
GB = 44.74% with a standard deviation of .07
FB = 37.03% with a standard deviation of .064
LD = 18.23% with a standard deviation of .026
IFFB = 9.06% with a standard deviation of .034
So line drive rates are fairly constant and make up a small portion of a pitchers batted balls. This means that the effect of line drive % on BABIP is not minimal but less than one might suspect.
As the other article that I posted shows that if we take a BABIP of range of .285 to .305 we are going to capture the majority pitchers. There are more advanced (complex) ways to look at BABIP but the .300 eyeball test works pretty well as a rule of thumb.
If we go back to the pitchers that I looked at in that post:
Ubaldo Jiminez has a LD% of 14% this year compared to 18% career and 18% major league average. That explains at least some of his low BABIP. Is this a repeatable skill? That's what we don't know. At least I don't know.
Dan Haren has a LD% of 20% this year compared to a 20% career and 18% major league average. A 2% increase in LD rate doesn't explain a .40 increase in BABIP. He's had bad luck.
Stephen Strasburg has a LD% of 22.3% in a pretty small sample. I don't think there is any way that his stuff makes him more likely to give up a line drive than a major league pitcher
Joe Saunders has a LD% of 18.7% this year compared to a 18% career and 18% major league average. He is what we thought he was.
So, if we see someone like Dan Haren with a .340 BABIP we know to look closer at that. He's shown no decrease in strike out rate or increase in walk rate so he's still got his stuff. There's no reason to think he's anything more than bad luck. If his K's were plummeting and walks increasing then we might be able to say that something is wrong and that's why he's getting pummeled, but that's not the case. Likewise, Ubaldo. There's nothing in his other stats to show that he's become totally dominant since last year. His K and walk rates are the same. So, I find his decreased LD% and BABIP% more likely to be a fluke until shown otherwise.
So, in summary. McCracken didn't say that batted balls are totally out of the pitcher's control. His genius came from being maybe the first person to look at it and realize that pitchers don't control it as much as was assumed
Thank you very much for the time you put into the above. Much is explained regarding pitcher variation. I shall read the link associated with batter's linedrive variation when I can devote some time and thinking to it.
Discovering that what to appearances is skill, is actually rooted greatly in random chance, sucks a bit of the romance out of the sport, but I can live with the lost romance in the name of truth finding. This puts me to mind of those tv and radio broadcasters who will see an errant pitch bounce in the dirt, and then off the catcher's body, and follow it with an orgy of praise for what a great ball blocker that particular catcher is...and (typically) always has been. It certainly has long appeared to me that blocking a wild pitch is nearly always a matter of the luck of the bounce. The reaction time available is so tiny that all a catcher can do is make a guess at which way the ball is going and move his body accordingly. If the bounce favors his guess, then he becomes one of those all time great plate blockers over whom the announcers will gush. It struck me that the only skill involved was reaction speed, and any catcher faster than another will be the better blocker because the rest is just guessing. Thus, when the Giants announcers are praising fat, sluggish Benjie Molina for his pitch blocking skills, they are actually praising his luck on a particular sequence.
If the bounce foils the catcher's guess, there is typically no comment from the announcers regarding what a poor plate blocker this fellow is. Real scientific stuff.
Thanks again for your reply. If I have further questions after reading that link, I'll be back to prevail upon you some more.
Thank you very much for the time you put into the above. Much is explained regarding pitcher variation. I shall read the link associated with batter's linedrive variation when I can devote some time and thinking to it.
Of course.
I'll refer you back to my Original Post. I don't claim to be any kind of expert in the field. I'm just a baseball fan who took an interest.
Answering your question (and questions generally) is interesting to me because I look at things I've not looked at before. I'd never read the McCracken article until this morning. I actually just read Moneyball Friday and Saturday and the chapter on McCracken came up last night at probably just about the same time you were writing your second to last post, actually.
I think I may have earned my way onto some people's bad sides on this forum because they post something along the lines of "so-and-so is having a great year this year because he's really learned to hit his spots". I wonder, "is that true? Why IS so-and-so having a great year?" Then I do some investigating and find out that its just a low BABIP and so-and-so is actually having worse control than normal and post that. It probably comes across as 'I'm right and you're wrong' but it isn't that. It's curiosity and a want to share something that I find truly interesting and that has increased my enjoyment of baseball.
So, ask away. It's the best way that I know to help me learn.
Quote:
Discovering that what to appearances is skill, is actually rooted greatly in random chance, sucks a bit of the romance out of the sport, but I can live with the lost romance in the name of truth finding.
If the bounce foils the catcher's guess, there is typically no comment from the announcers regarding what a poor plate blocker this fellow is. Real scientific stuff.
Again. I just read Moneyball. I finished it in about 30 hours. Picked it up Friday at 3:00 PM and read the last at about 8:00 last night. I could hardly put it down. I highly recommend it to everyone, even if you're not really stats inclined. It's an interesting look at behind the scenes baseball.
The focus of the book, of course, is how Billy Beane created some very successful Oakland A's teams by forgetting all the traditional 'wisdom' of baseball and finding out what really goes on.
It might take some of the romance away to learn that Big Papi doesn't actually have a magic ability to hit 2-run game-winning home runs, and that he's (was?) just a great hitter who had opportunities. But just because its not magic doesn't make it any more awesome when it happens (if you have reason to root for the Red Sox).
I can at understand why the initial reaction of fans is to discredit and in some cases hate SABR, and while I do not fully understand all their stats and formulas I still respect and try to learn from it. For some fans though, it takes the "romantic" side of the game out of it, people like to believe in clutch, or BA being a great indicator of ability. It also takes some work to really understand it, and you have to at least be interested, if not have a background in stats to really wrap your head around it.
With that said, I'm still mad at BPro for last year, they kept telling me my whitesox were going to win the division, and they did not
Translations are not true-talent projections. They are simply translations of lower-level performance that are subject to the same caveats as all performance statistics are. They’re subject to issues of small-sample size. They’re subject to luck, fluke years, career years, injuries, and reflects players not being experience professionally.
If I am off logic with this, I would welcome an explanation.
If batting average is a function of linedrive frequency, and the better batters hit linedrives with greater frequency, then we have established that there is such a thing as an ability to hit linedrives.
It then follows that in those years where a pitcher's ba yielded rises, the percentage of linedrives yielded also must have risen.
But....
By the McCracken model, pitchers are only responsible for those linedrives which clear the fence, and the frequency of other linedrives yielded is viewed as a random variable. That would suggest that there is no such thing as an ability to prevent the hitting of linedrives.
That does not make sense to me. If doing something with great frequency is an ability, then preventing it from happening would also have to be an ability.
Conclusion...there is some flaw in the McCracken model. It annoys me greatly that I have not figured out the specifics of it, but there has to be a flaw. The ability to prevent linedrives must exist, it just hasn't been found in the stats yet.
Roger Maris once said, "The difference between a line drive and a home run is an eighth of an inch and this cannot be controlled. It just happens." But line drive home runs are more frequent today than in Maris's era.
Roger Maris once said, "The difference between a line drive and a home run is an eighth of an inch and this cannot be controlled. It just happens." But line drive home runs are more frequent today than in Maris's era.
Nope. Personal observation. With a livelier ball, pitching diluted by expansion and shorter outfield dimensions, why not?
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