Pitcher Foul Ball Percentage - Useless Information of the Day

by Jeff Zimmerman on May 20, 2010 1:21 PM EDT

Last night, I was watching the Royals and Tribe play and it seemed like it was free ball night at Jacob's Field as every other pitch seemed to be fouled into the stands. For Gil Meche, who seem to have the most fouled off him, ended up with 30.3%being fouled off according to Gameday. I had no idea what the average percentage is for all pitchers so I ran the data on a Pitch F/X database from 2007 to 2010 looking at Foul, Foul (Runner Going), Foul Bunt and Foul Tip (foul outs were not counted) results. The league average over the time from was 17.5% of all pitchers are hit for a foul ball and that is your useless piece of information of the day.

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Is creating foul balls possibly a pitcher skill?

Is there any year-to-year correlation for either pitchers or hitters in terms of foul ball percentage? Or foul balls per contact?

by ThePanda on May 20, 2010 3:21 PM EDT reply actions

I could swear that Pizza Cutter looked at that back in his Stat Speak days

I wonder if I can resurrect that information.

Winner, Beyond the Box Score 32 Predictions Contest, 2009

by Mike Fast on May 20, 2010 4:12 PM EDT up reply actions

Here we go

Part 1: http://web.archive.org/web/20080510074137/http://mvn.com/mlb-stats/2008/04/15/the-foul-ball-part-one-what-does-it-tell-us-about-a-batter/
Part 2: http://web.archive.org/web/20080510074137/http://mvn.com/mlb-stats/2008/04/21/the-foul-ball-part-two-what-does-it-tell-us-about-a-pitcher/
Part 3: http://web.archive.org/web/20080510074137/http://mvn.com/mlb-stats/2008/04/30/the-foul-ball-part-three-what-does-it-tell-us-about-an-at-bat/

Winner, Beyond the Box Score 32 Predictions Contest, 2009

by Mike Fast on May 20, 2010 5:15 PM EDT up reply actions

Two MVN archives should be logged/linked up somewhere.

Too much good stuff

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by Jeff Zimmerman on May 20, 2010 5:18 PM EDT up reply actions

I'm working on republishing my stuff

But it’s a bit tedious since the Wayback Machine doesn’t store the images. So I’m digging them out of my archives where I can find them and republishing them at Fast Balls one by one as I get the time.

I wish that Colin and Russell would republish their stuff, too. That’s where the real meat of that site came from. Of course, Russell might have hundreds of pieces if you counted them all.

And there were some other good writers there for short periods, too.

So far I have been able to count on Google + the Wayback Machine finding most of what I’ve wanted from Pizza Cutter’s stuff. A lot of Colin’s stuff missed the archiving window, it seems.

Winner, Beyond the Box Score 32 Predictions Contest, 2009

by Mike Fast on May 20, 2010 6:00 PM EDT up reply actions

It is on my to do list now, this article was just being bored last night.

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by Jeff Zimmerman on May 20, 2010 4:41 PM EDT up reply actions

The Book

had a question and answer a couple weeks ago about what the future of sabrmetrics would be (someone asked if we knew everything we could ever know).
I really think that foul balls and the importance of foul balls will be a huge break through.
People who hit more foul balls vs. swing through strikes, are they better hitters? Do they actually strike out less? Do pitchers who avoid foul balls have a better ERA/FIP/xFIP.
Do foul balls go up in high leverage situations? Do people who hit line drive foul balls have more line drives?

Because so little data is actually captured on foul balls, these are all difficult questions to answer.

by Okobojicat on May 20, 2010 4:48 PM EDT reply actions

I completely forgot I wrote this back in 2008

http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2008/9/11/612150/the-value-of-fouls

by Dan Turkenkopf on May 20, 2010 4:57 PM EDT reply actions

Of course my last comment in the thread calls into question my data set because of the pitch sequence field in retrosheet

So I don’t really know if it’s a useful article.

by Dan Turkenkopf on May 20, 2010 4:59 PM EDT up reply actions

I was thinking the same thing when

DeJesus fouled off about 8 pitches in an AB (I think in the same game). But my question: was the extra pitch worth something in terms of getting towards the bullpen? Is there value in fouling off pitches (especially 2-strike pitches) in that it gets the starter closer to his pitch count limit?

by SagehenMacGyver47 on May 20, 2010 6:18 PM EDT reply actions