PS: I imagine Matthew will come along shortly with pitcher hitting WAR for everyone not named Zambrano.
How right you are.
I modified Graham's numbers just a bit, calculating the average level from 2008 data only, which raised the wOBA up to .172.
Please do not fall into the easy trap of thinking of this in terms of replacement level. We attempted to proxy the replacement level for a pitcher's hitting ability in order to find a proper positional adjustment. After that, it's the standard hitting WAR calculations used for anyone else. To re-state something Tango has mentioned:
WAR is offensive wins above AVERAGE, defensive wins above AVERAGE, a positional adjustment, and then we apply wins above replacement (at a league level).
The end values [Wins added] presented here are the results of the pitcher's offensive wins (above average [BRAA] ) added to their positional adjustment + replacement level ( [Pos. Adj.] which comes from their average wOBA compared to the league as a whole, an implied ranking which I think does a decent enough job of estimating replacement level).*
Does that make sense? To me it does. There is a great comment made by Dave Cameron (reprinted here) that talks about positional adjustments in terms of selecting a baseball team out of, say 100, people trying out. It went along the lines of saying that the first thing you would do would be determine who could handle catching, and that might be some 10 people. Then you'd separate out those that had the skills to play shortstop and that might be 15 people, and so on and so forth. In reality though, the actual first thing you would do is separate the groups into two; those that can pitch, and those that cannot.
A pitcher's hitting has been, to my knowledge, overlooked so far and the spread in values between say Carlos Zambrano and Ben Sheets (two whole wins!) is significant enough to call this a gross negligence on our part. Of course, this wouldn't be an issue at all if the National League adopted the DH.
Point of interest: Felix Hernandez was the 15th best hitting pitcher by value last year, generating an extra 3.2 runs with his two plate appearances.
*The more clever among you might note that we are still missing a defensive value for pitchers' fielding prowess.
0 recs | 56 comments
The way I see it
Give Felix 600 PA and the division is pretty much ours
Fett42 - January 27, 2009
Felix would hit a grand slam every time he's up
even with no one on base
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
Only to selfishly pad his RBI's totals. Rally killer.
Kermit. - January 27, 2009
Felix hurts the team by not hitting enough Grand Slams
EnglishMariner - January 27, 2009
Wonder how much Z. can get for him from the NL
Kermit. - January 27, 2009
If he can hit a grand slam with his eyes closed
He’d probably hit at least a seven run home run every time with his eyes open.
Vatinius - January 27, 2009
I just spent 15 minutes opting to search for that USSM article rather than get ready for work
yet I can’t find it either.
katal - January 27, 2009
getting* ready
dammit.
katal - January 27, 2009
I wrote it in a comment somewhere.
davidcameron - January 27, 2009
Reprinted
Here
JI - January 27, 2009
Original thread
Here
Teej - January 27, 2009
Yeah, well I can't link to USSM comments.
JI - January 27, 2009
I know, I just figured if anyone's looking for the original, there it is.
Somewhere in the comments. It was a good discussion.
Teej - January 27, 2009
I can't imagine that pitchers field enough to have more than a 2-3 run gap between the best and worst over the course of a season
unless you’re talking about some aberration like the 2006 Tigers
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
All the FPF in the world doesn't make a difference
if Jeff Weaver strikes out 9 batters in the deciding game.
JI - January 27, 2009
PFP?
Jeff Sullivan - January 27, 2009
Fielding Pitcher's (I can't find a synonym for practice that begins with F)
JI - January 27, 2009
Fuckups works in the Tigers' case.
Faux - January 27, 2009
PMR calculations quoted at Beyond the Boxscore suggest that the spread is close to 20 runs a season between the best and worst
You can’t seriously expect me to believe that there’s a 2-3 run difference between Greg Maddox and K-Rod. One acts as a 5th infielder, the other might as well not even be there.
I think the key point about pitcher defense is that while the number of playable “balls in zone” is very low compared to other positions, almost none of them are routine plays that every pitcher will make— precisely because of the existence of players like K-Rod. By contrast, second basemen get a ton of balls, but every single MLB second baseman will make plays on ~68% of them.
PaulThomas - January 27, 2009
I had a nice long response drawn up but you got to my point
I’m just not seeing how there’s that many balls hit in the pitcher’s zone over the course of a year
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
And some of the balls that get by a pitcher are routine plays for a MINF.
Pitcher’s fielding defense seems quite a difficult proposition.
Matthew - January 27, 2009
That's what I'm thinking
plus, the way I was originally imagining it, the majority of balls that are the pitchers responsibility would be sacrifice bunts, which should be ~an automatic out
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
And then of course you'd run into the problem where in the NL, bunts often come from the pitchers,
who are probably slower runners and much less likely to leg out a sac bunt for an infield hit, which would seem to make NL pitchers look that much better
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
I don't know...
It’s certainly a tricky issue, but if you look at Greg Maddux, his career numbers according to bb-ref are 3.13 plays per 9 innings against a league average of 1.82 plays per 9 innings. Over 200 IP, that’s 29 plays above average. Even figuring that there are a whole bunch of caveats, those are his career numbers, and it seems like he could have had some +4 or +5-run seasons sprinkled in there (since he’s not going to be perfectly consistent), and that there could be some -4 or -5-run pitchers that come along every now and then.
I wouldn’t bet the house on it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the difference at the far extremes is more like 8-10 runs and the difference between more typically very good and very bad pitchers would be 4-5 runs. It seems like it would be hard, but with enough BIP data and time, I think someone could figure it out.
ubelmann - January 27, 2009
The question is really whether plays made by a pitcher correlates to runs saved in the same vein as infielders
I’d be inclined to say otherwise, because a lot of the chances pitchers miss get recovered by the middle infielders.
Graham MacAree - January 27, 2009
I'm thinking you'd have to weigh bunts/dribblers
that the other IFs couldn’t field and hard hit balls through the box.
JI - January 27, 2009
This also reminds me that I want to see a no hitter end on a line drive back to the pitcher.
JI - January 27, 2009
Also, how would popups in the middle infield work?
They’re in the pitchers zone, obviously, does he lose credit when the third baseman comes stumbling across the mound to make the play (yes, I know, it’s stupid, but it happens)
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
You should ask someone with credibility.
JI - January 27, 2009
Don't the other infielders almost always take those?
It seems like pitchers only catch pop-ups if absolutely no one else can make them.
ubelmann - January 27, 2009
Which is really stupid
pitchers should field their position
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
You don't want the fragile little snowflakes to pull a muscle
They already hurt themselves doing everything from sleeping on their arms funny to chewing steak too hard, the last thing you want is to give them more opportunities to have boo boos.
Vatinius - January 27, 2009
don't forget
the living hell that is the hangnail.
pdb - January 27, 2009
At 3.13 plays/9, that would add up to a hell of a lot of chances over the course of a season, no?
I’m starting to think I was very, very wrong about my original statement
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
This is where BIP data would be important
Knowing the direction, speed, and type of hit, you could say on average how often a ball would be fielded by another infielder.
What gets me is the sheer magnitude of Maddux’s plays above average. Just as a rough estimate, even if we halve it, saying that part of it is due to his BIP distribution, and then halve it again, saying that other infielders would get some of those plays or something, and then only give him 1/3 run per play because again some plays would be made by other fielders and we’re talking mostly about singles here, Maddux would still be 2.4 runs above average for his entire career. And with some variance from season-to-season, it does seem like he could have some +4-5-run seasons to me.
The other thing is that on the negative side, if a pitcher throws the ball away a lot, those are going to be very costly errors (the difference between a nearly automatic out and a double), so I’m not 100% sure that it’s entirely fair to discount pitchers’ plays all the way to 1/3 of a run or so.
ubelmann - January 27, 2009
Interesting
I didn’t check the stats before I tossed that number out there.
Also, how much of Maddux’s plays made do you think can be attributed to being in the NL for his whole career? He probably has fielded a lot more bunts than say, Mike Mussina over the course of his career
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
That should be largely reflected in the league average rate, no?
Maddux’s career lgRF9 is 1.82 and Mussina’s is 1.70, suggesting that AL pitchers indeed get fewer chances on average. (Mussina, btw, is only at 1.84 RF9.)
ubelmann - January 27, 2009
I'm just thinking that if you try to leverage this for all of MLB, you're going to mess up the data because NL pitchers get more chances
and it would seem logical that those extra chances are fairly “easy” chances (I could throw out CC Sabathia running out a sac bunt without too much trouble)
seattlebruin - January 27, 2009
Imagine that a pitcher is perfect and hits a HR in every at bat.
But, his ERA is one million.
Then, wouldn’t that pitcher’s bat be worth nearly zero wins?
This is obviously extreme, but basically what I’m saying is — since pitchers are unique in that they only have at bats when they are pitching, might their pitching stats affect their hitting worth?
SSJemmett - January 27, 2009
Essentially this is asking what effect a pitcher has on the run environment and how that distorts the value of the batters
I have to imagine that if Lincecum put up the same batting line as Zambrano in 2008, his bat would have been worth more – it takes less runs to win a game that Timmy starts than it does for one of Zambrano’s.
I’m convinced that there’s an something here, but I’m not sure about how large it would be.
Graham MacAree - January 27, 2009
An something? Bah.
Graham MacAree - January 27, 2009
It seems like what you are saying...
…is that, for a hitter in general, the value of his hits depend on the run-scoring environment. And that for pitchers in particular, their run-scoring environment differs from that of their teammates.
I would agree with that, but you’d probably have to be on the extremes for it to matter very much.
ubelmann - January 27, 2009
Of course, there's the problem that, even given 32 starts/year...
…this hypothetical 1 million ERA pitcher would get like, 3 PA max. He’s never make it out of the first inning, and would only get to bat if he was on the away team and they went through the entire lineup in the first inning.
Terminator_X - January 27, 2009
Actually
He’d probably get something like 15-20 PA, since if you’ve got a guy who hits a HR literally every time up, you’re batting him in one of the top-3 spots in the order.
Terminator_X - January 27, 2009
If I imagine that
then I follow it up by imagining said pitcher being converted to another position.
The Ancient Mariner - January 27, 2009
I'm thinking DH
Terminator_X - January 27, 2009
Not sure--they've tended to end up in the OF
Why waste the throwing arm, after all?
The Ancient Mariner - January 27, 2009
With a 1 million ERA, either his control is terrible (in which case, let him DH)
or he throws nothing but meatballs (which is exactly what fielders would want).
Llewdor - January 27, 2009
Control's a fine-tuning issue
Just because you walk guys doesn’t mean you can’t make the throw from RF.
The Ancient Mariner - January 27, 2009
I wonder If going to the AL could help both Zambrano and Sheets
Going to the AL for Sheets would help him by about 1/2 a win because he’d never have to hit again.
Zambrano could hypothetically DH in every game he wasn’t pitching and the team could give up the DH so that Zambrano could pitch in games he started. That would give him almost a full season worth of at bats. His value last year from hitting was worth around 1.5 wins (from the posted spreadsheet) which is so large because pitchers are so bad. If instead we consider the case where he can hit almost every day but is compared against the DH instead of pitchers his hitting is worth around 2 wins because he would be roughly an average DH. That means Zambrano would be around 2 wins better off going to the AL.
Am I crazy/wrong or would Zambrano and Sheets both benefit from going to the AL by about 0.5 wins?
Edgar for Pres - January 27, 2009
The main problem I see with the Zambrano arrangement...
…is that he probably isn’t that good of a hitter. He’s got a career .270 wOBA and has been ~26-27 runs below average over about 500 PA. So unless you know that he would improve to average with more reps or something, then he wouldn’t be an average DH.
Last year was by far his best year offensively.
ubelmann - January 27, 2009
Yes
As a hitter Zambrano would go from a .400 OPS talen base to a .750 OPS talent base.
JI - January 27, 2009
That's assuming that seeing him more often won't get people to scout him better,
and then he’ll get worse pitches to hit.
I’m not saying everyone throws him meatballs because he’s a pitcher, but you have to assume that they don’t look for tendencies and weakness from him as they do a normal hitter, as you probably only see him 4AB per series.
Faux - January 27, 2009
"Talent Base" is reffering to the difference between pitchers and DHs
It basically subtracts ~25 runs from his value in positional adjustment.
Vatinius - January 27, 2009
Ahh
Didn’t know that term.
Faux - January 27, 2009
Ben Sheets is quite possibly the least athletic person in professional sports.
Not only is he one of the worst hitting pitchers ever, he’s also worth something like -40 runs/4000 oppurtinities by PMR. If memory serves me correctly, he was something like -5 over the course of last season by PMR (and that’s not adjusted for low opportunities, that’s actually -5 runs).
Jack Moore - January 27, 2009
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