Jay Jaffe's most recent article at Baseball Prospectus carries the tagline, "Some outstanding early-season pitching gems have caused the decrease in run scoring to be overstated."
If true, that's a very interesting thesis. But maybe even more interesting is how one would go about separating a change in the MLB run-scoring environment from a change in pitching talent.
I can think of a few reasons pitching talent would improve:
- experienced pitchers have taken the next step
- there's been a recent influx of exceptional, young pitchers
- there's been a strategic breakthrough that many pitchers have picked up on, giving them an advantage over hitters (the cutter?)And I can think of a bunch of reasons why the run environment might have changed:
- the ball
- new or changed ballparks
- weather
- the strike zone called differently
- changes to the PED policy have benefited pitchers relative to hittersSo, my question is, "How can we separate the changes in pitching talent from the changes in run environment?"
Should we look at the spread in talent level (and see if there are more dominant pitchers these days?) Should we track specific stats or combinations of stats?
I don't know -- got any brilliant ideas?
A question from Sky
almost 2 years ago
Sky Kalkman
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I don't have a BP subscription so I don't know if the article covered this
But are we sure there’s a meaningful change in scoring compared to where we’d normally be this time of year?
As to your question, does it mean something different if the cause is better pitching versus an environmental change (besides being cooler). Maybe it says something about whether it’s sustainable?
It would matter when we try to figure out how good everyone is.
But it definitely wouldn’t matter for every question we’d ask.
Wouldn't their value end up being the same regardless of the cause?
Unless it truly is because of an increased spread in talent (or a skew to the previous distribution), in which case the value of the top pitchers would go up, the value of the bottom pitchers would probably stay about the same and the value of batters would go down (I think).
by Dan Turkenkopf on Jun 16, 2010 8:59 PM EDT up reply actions
I suppose it matters how you measure value
But in most cases it’s in comparison to the peers. So as long as the relative value of the pitchers remained the same in this high-talent era, then the valuations would as well.
by Dan Turkenkopf on Jun 16, 2010 9:53 PM EDT up reply actions
Wouldn't a change in run environment have to be due to either
a) a change in pitcher talent
or
b) a change in hitter talent
or some combination thereof? It just sounds like we’re saying “is it this or that?” when the two things are the same.
It is really hard to say
whether a change has happened in run environment or in pitching talent, because in the stats, the two can be overly intertwined. A move toward more strikeout prone hitters might mask a rise in high K pitchers (is Mark Renyolds the innovation or is Ublado Jimenez?) Such logic could be applied to almost every one of the aforementioned factors.
For that reason, I would put more faith in the specific than in the general. Pitch F/X may be our greatest ally here, since it is super specific. Are hitters seeing more hard to hit pitches (ie “binominal clustering,” large levels of break, large speed differences etc) or are hitters slugging less on fairly typical offerings? Are strike zones being expanded in certain “pitching gems?” I am not a pitch F/X guru, but that is where I would turn to address these questions.
- Matt Sullivan
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while. - Nuke LaLoosh
I was going to save this for a full article, but this seems like as good a place as any to post this.
The issue this year is that AL batters have hit more ground balls and hit fewer fly balls out of the park. The latter can at least partially be explained by Target Field and my guess is everything else can be explained by random variation.
The batted ball lines are as a percentage of PA’s.
Beyond the Box Score / Capitol Avenue Club / shwitter: @CapitolAvenue
How about a higher stress on team defense? Plenty of teams, many of which are in the AL, openly admitted to putting more stress on defense after seeing the Mariners jump a ton of games in the standings last year without adding bats. I’m not sure if it’s the case, just wondering if there’s any chance this could be a major reason as well.
Twitter: @Ben_Duronio
by BenDuronio on Jun 17, 2010 12:03 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs
One could get a rough sense of whether a change in run environment is an expected development due to change in pitching talent by calculating the expected runs allowed thus far using each pitchers projected value (like in the recent true talent posts) and comparing that to previous years (or doing the same for hitters). If more pitchers are coming into their peaks than one would see a decrease in the projected runs scored compared to the previous years. This would of course not take into account the “experience pitchers taking the next step” or “recent influx of exceptional young pitchers” since they wouldn’t have an accurate established talent level. Though if you were analyzing previous years you could use subsequent performance to determine a pitchers talent level at that point (something like in these graphs: http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2010/6/7/1503176/the-hall-of-fame-zone-revisited)...
@ BenDuronio
The league average for BABIP is a shade down from last season but hardly enough to assume that the emphasis on defense from teams like Boston and Seattle is influencing stats across the boards. The run environment based for BABIP is not dramatically different from anytime in the last five or so years, so far as I can see. strikeouts appear to the biggest factor in the depressed run environment by a quick and simple look, but who is responsible, hitters or pitchers? The depressed FB/HR is likely also a factor (see above), but again responsibility is hard to assign.
- Matt Sullivan
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while. - Nuke LaLoosh
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