Waino

This is a Pirates blog, but I'd like to talk about a Cardinals player. Adam Wainwright is St. Louis's best pitcher. Going into last weekend, he led Cardinals starters in innings and ERA. Last year, he led Cardinals starters in innings and ERA. In 2013, he led Cardinals starters in innings and ERA. He missed 2011 recovering from Tommy John surgery, and he was used somewhat cautiously in 2012. But in 2010, he was second on the team in innings (by 4.2) and led in ERA. In 2009, he led the team in innings and was second in ERA. From 2009 to 2014--including his missed Tommy John season and his recovery year--his 2.83 ERA was the third best in baseball (behind Clayton Kershaw's 2.33 and Felix Hernandez's 2.73) among pitchers with at least 1,000 innings pitched. He'd been credited with 92 wins, the fourth most (after Justin Verlander's 106, Jered Weaver's 96, and Kershaw's 93).  He finished second in the voting for the Cy Young Award in 2010 and 2013 and third in 2009 and 2014. That's four top-three finished in six seasons, one of which he missed and one of which he was coming back from major surgery. All told, Wainwright is not only clearly the Cardinals' best pitcher, he's also one of the best in baseball, probably the second best in the National League after Kershaw.

And he's done for the year. This is what happened to him on Saturday:



Diagnosis: Torn Achilles tendon. Out for the year. Injury expert Will Carroll (that's his Twitter handle, too: @injuryexpert) notes

Surgery and rehab has developed over the past few seasons and players in the NFL and NBA have come back well. That bodes well for Wainwright.

That's good for Wainwright and the Cardinals, but only for 2016. For 2015, they'll have to make do without one of the best starting pitchers in baseball. In a National League Central race that's expected to be tight, with the Pirates and Cubs seen vying for second place behind the Redbirds, it's looking a lot more like a three-team race. (As of this morning, the 13-6 Cardinals are a game ahead of the 12-7 Cubs and three ahead of the 11-10 Pirates).

Somewhat surprisingly, Wainwright's injury has re-ignited the designated hitter debate. As you almost certainly know, given that you're reading this blog, the American League has a designated hitter for the pitcher and the National League does not. This has been the case since 1973, so with the DH now in its 43rd season, it would be, as lawyers would say, settled case law, one might think. One would be really, really wrong. The discussion of a universal DH has set off a free-for-all on the internet. I'm not surprised. I attend a lot of baseball lectures and conferences, and saying something along the lines of "abolish the DH" or "we shouldn't have two leagues playing two different rules" is a guaranteed applause line. And I don't mean polite applause, I mean the kind of applause that political candidates get when they're talking to their supporters: Loud, enthusiastic applause, punctuated by whoops and whatnot.

The relationship to Wainwright is that if he hadn't been batting, he wouldn't have ruptured his Achilles tendon. (Probably not. He could've ruptured it pitching or fielding or jogging in the outfield between starts. We'll never know. But since he didn't have a history of Achilles problems, this looks much more like a fluke accident than one waiting to happen.) So if we have a DH, we don't have Adam Wainwright rupturing his Achilles tendon getting out of the batter's box, and we don't have Chien-Ming Wang, a 19-game winner for the Yankees in 2006 and 2007 and off to a 6-0 start in 2008, injuring his foot in an interleague game and pretty much never being the same pitcher again. 

Now, let me give you two disclaimers:

1. I think the prevention of pitching injuries is not a great justification for the DH. Yes, what happened to Wainwright and Wang and others is terrible. Had they not been batting, I'd wager, they wouldn't have gotten hurt. But what happened to them is pretty rare. We don't get a lot of pitcher injuries from swinging the bat or running the bases.
2. I'm pretty agnostic on the DH issue. I'm mildly in favor of expanding it to the National League, for reasons I'll explain below. But I'm OK with leaving things as is, and I'd be OK if major league baseball were to abolish it. I just can't see getting worked up over the issue. It doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game, one way or the other. 

That being said, I'm going to show you a graph. I do a lot of charts and graphs here, and I know that it's a bit much for some of you. So this'll be the only one for today. And I'm not going to tell you (yet) what it is. I'm just going to present it and let it sink in, OK? Here goes:

Here's how you should perceive a graph like that: It's measuring something that's in steady decline. Ignore the scale on the left, and this could be something like infant mortality rates, or percentage of Americans engaged in agriculture, or proportion of homes heated by wood, or something. It's a pronounced, consistent, downward trend.

OK, enough mystery. I used a statistic called wRC+. It's an overall measure of offensive contribution computed by FanGraphs. It stands for weighted runs created. The + means that it's normalized: It adjusts for each player's home park and the year in which he played. The average wRC+ every year is 100. Good hitters are above 100, weaker hitters are below it. All-star Andrew McCutchen had a wRC+ 168 last year, the best in all of baseball. Since the average is 100, McCutchen's 168 means that he was 68% better than the average batter last year. Light-hitting middle infielder Clint Barmes had a 79 wRC+, meaning he was 21% below the league average. I'm not saying that wRC+ is the perfect measure of offensive performance, but it's a consistent calculation that evens out the variations between high-offense and low-offense eras.

Anyway, the graph is the combined wRC+ for pitchers beginning in 1901. That's a pronounced, consistent, downward trend. PItchers are getting worse and worse at batting. And, when you think about it, that's not surprising: Pitchers don't bat. There's a DH in high school. There's a DH in college. (Note that the DH in high school can be used for any hitter, not just the pitcher, and in both high school and college, a manager may elect not to use the DH if the pitcher's a good hitter.) There's a DH in the rookie and Class A levels of the minors. There's a DH in Class AA and AAA unless both teams playing a game are National League affiliates and agree not to use it. The list of leagues in which the DH is not used is shorter than the list of leagues that use it. The holdouts are the National League, Japan's Central League, Japanese high schools, American Legion, and Little League. That's it. I'm probably missing some obscure leagues, but it's not uncommon for a National League pitcher to not swing a bat in a game from the time he leaves Little League until he reaches the high minors.

So even if the American League were to eliminate the DH, pitchers would still be lousy hitters, because they don't learn to hit as they're developing. Yes, that might change with time if other leagues drop the DH as well, but there's no guarantee that they will.

We're left with pitchers being almost automatic outs. When you hear about good hitting pitchers, you hear about Madison Bumgarner and Zack Greinke, among others. Bumgarner, somewhat famously, hit more grand slams last year (two) than Derek Jeter did in his entire career (one). Greinke provided these memorable moments during the Dodgers' Divisional Series against the Cardinals:

So yeah, a DH would deprive fans of seeing Bumgarner and Greinke hit. But hold on: Bumgarner's career slash line (batting average/on base percentage/slugging average; the average in the majors last year was .251/.314/.386) is .160/.201/.247. Greinke's is .214/.263/.325. You may have heard of Mario Mendoza, the 1970s-era weak-hitting shortstop. Sometime in the late 1970s, some player--the identity's unclear--coined the term "Mendoza Line." Back then, Sunday newspapers listed overall batting and pitching statistics for the players in each league. They'd list batters in descending order of batting average. Due to space limitations, they wouldn't display every batter, just those above a minimum level. It seemed that the last name listed among hitters would always be Mendoza's. He habitually hit around .200. The player in question talked about starting the season so slowly, he was "hitting below the Mendoza line"--his batting average was so low the papers didn't even bother printing it. It's come to mean, in common usage, a batting average of .200. 

Well, Mario Mendoza's career slash line is .215/.245/.262. That means that Greinke's hitting a little better, and Bumgarner a good deal worse, than the man whose name signifies futility with the bat. And they're the best of the bunch. Last year, pitchers as a whole batted .122/.153/.152. So far this year, they're even worse: .095/.119/.109. 

So if you like the DH because it adds offense, fine. If you don't like it because it takes away strategy, OK. If you like it because you don't want to see a pitcher who's cruising get pulled by a pinch hitter, I see your point. If you don't like it because it removes things like pinch hitters and double switches, I get it. If you like it because it'd prevent injuries like Wainwright's, sure. But you really can't say that the DH takes the bat out of the pitcher's hands, because pitchers haven't had a bat for a long time. There have been, in baseball history, 66 pitchers who batted at least 500 times and maintained an OPS+ of 50 or more, which means that their on base plus slugging was at least half of the average. Of them, only one--Carlos Zambrano--started his career in this century. All but eight retired before the American League adopted the DH in 1973. Exactly two-thirds were done playing before the end of World War II. Pitchers capable of much more than laying down the occasional bunt have been out of baseball for a long, long time. Getting rid of the DH, whatever its merits, isn't going to bring them back.

That's why I'm in favor--just mildly--of expanding the DH to the National League. I don't get any enjoyment from watching pitchers at the plate. Yes, there's the comic relief of Bartolo Colon's at bats, but they just can't hit, and that's not going to change. 

Flyover: Los Angeles Angels

This continues a series of looks at each team over the past month. Let's improve the mood around here. Having looked at the tales of woe that are the Milwaukee Brewers and the Oakland Athletics, let's look at a happy story: the Los Angeles Angels.

How Are They Doing Lately? As I pointed out in the A's essay, the Angels have gone from trailing the best-record-in-baseball A's at the July 31 trade deadline to an insurmountable 10.5 game lead in the American League West, the first team in the majors to clinch a postseason appearance. And they have the best record in baseball, 94-57 entering today's play, three games better than the surprising Baltimore Orioles. But their ascendancy shouldn't be that much of a surprise. Yes, they trailed the A's most of the season, but they trailed them with the second-best record in baseball. 

Anyway, they've been really good lately. They're 22-7 over the past 30 days, the best record in the American League. They've scored the most runs per game (5.7, well ahead of the Tigers, in second at 5.4) and they've given up the third fewest (3.4). 

What's Going Right? Well, obviously, both hitting and pitching. (The team's defense has been a bit above average as well.) On offense, they're second in batting average and on base percentage, and fourth in slugging percentage over the past 30 days. They've been the third toughest team in the league to strike out, whiffing in just 18% of plate appearances, and they're fourth in homers and fifth in isolated slugging (slugging percentage minus batting average), which means that when they make contact, it's hard contact. Oh, and speaking of contact, they've made contact on 90% of the pitches thrown to them in the strike zone, the third-highest percentage in the league, indicating that they're not missing on pitches in the zone.

The team ERA of 3.27 over the past 30 days is fourth lowest in the league, compared to a league average of 3.68. The starters' 3.19 is fifth best, the bullpen's 3.38 is sixth best. The Angels don't follow the On The Field Of Play mantra that it's good throw strikes, but it's better to get strikes, as they're fifth-lowest in the league over the past 30 days at pitching to the strike zone (they're not throwing strikes), and they're getting batters to swing at just 27% of pitches outside the zone, second-lowest in the league (they're not getting strikes). They've induced weak contact, though, with only 7% of fly balls becoming homers (fourth-lowest in the league, where the average is 9%). Among six Angels relievers with over six inning pitched over the past 30 days, only one, Fernando Salas, has given up a homer.

What's Going Wrong? Hard to quibble with the offense. They've been maybe a little lucky. Their batting average on balls in play is .313 compared to a league average of .295, and an average well above (or below) the league average are probably a little fluky. But that's about it. Same for the pitchers: that very low home run rate on fly balls probably isn't sustainable. The pitchers also walk more hitters than you'd like, 8.5% of batters over the last 30 days compared to a league average of 7.3%, but they've been able to strand 78% of baserunners, second most in the league, compared to a league average of 73%. That, difference, too, is probably not going to persist.

All this suggests the Angels probably aren't quite as good as they've appeared to be over the past 30 days. That sure beats being bad, of course. 

Who's Hot? Three batters have been hot over the past 30 days. MVP-to-be center fielder Mike Trout is eighth in on base percentage, .392, and fifth in slugging percentage, .593. He's also tied for fourth in the league in homers with seven, first in runs with 28, and tied for seventh in RBI with 27. Shortstop Erick Aybar is batting .356 and second baseman Howie Kendrick has a slash line of .325/.361/.465. Catcher Chris Ianetta has a weird batting line: .212 batting average but .434 on base percentage, best on the club, as he's got twice as many walks and hit by pitches (22) as hits (11).

The Angels haven't missed a beat since ace Garrett RIchards (13-4, 2.61 ERA) suffered a season-ending knee injury on August 20. Over the past 30 days, Mike Shoemaker has gone 5-0 with a 1.13 ERA and Jered Weaver is 4-1 with a 2.84 ERA. 

At the beginning of the season, Huston Street was the closer for the Padres. The Angels' closer was Ernesto Frieri, who blew up for the Angels (6.39 ERA), then was traded to Pittsburgh (where he was worse: 10.13 ERA before earning his release) for Jason Grilli. Street joined the club on July 19 and has notched more saves (14) in the ensuing eight weeks than Frieri got in three months. Over the past 30 days, he's got five saves and a 1.80 ERA. Setup men Mike Morin and Joe Smith have pitched 23 innings and combined for a 0.78 ERA. 

Who's Not? On offense, no regular's been really bad, though highly-paid first baseman Albert Pujols ($23 million this year, $167 million more guaranteed through 2021, .286/.331/.420 slash line) and left fielder Josh Hamilton ($17 million this year, $89 million more guaranteed through 2017, .250/.294/.417) have been a lot more mortal than their paychecks would suggest. After Shoemaker and Weaver, the starting pitching's been unimpressive over the past 30 days. CJ Wilson and Hector Santiago have a combined 5-2 won-lost record, but that's due to outstanding run support; they have above-average ERAs of 4.22 and 3.97, respectively. 

What's the Outlook? The Angels are looking to October, where they'll appear for the first time since 2009. They have enough pop; the question will be whether they have enough pitching behind Shoemaker and Weaver. If they remain the top team in the league, they'll draw the wild card team, which presumably will have burned its ace in the one-game play-in, so LA will be favorites to advance to face the winner of what looks likely to be a Tigers-Orioles matchup for the American League championship.

What Happens When a Pitch is Thrown: Part 3 - Swing, Batter

So far in this series we've seen that while it's good for pitchers to throw strikes, it's better to get strikes. The difference between pitching a ball into the batter's strike zone and getting the batter to swing at the pitch (or get it called a strike) is largely a function of inducing swings on pitches that aren't in the strike zone. We'll look at that now. 

How often do batters swing at pitches? Batters swung at 46.4% of pitches last year. That compares to 44.7% of pitches that were in the strike zone. Batters swung at 65.5% of pitches in the strike zone and 31.0% of pitches outside the strike zone. Don't those figures strike you as low and high, respectively? But when you think about about, it makes sense. Super-selective hitters let a lot of strikes go by as they wait for something they can hit. Mike Trout and Joe Mauer each swung at fewer than 56% of the strikes they saw, while even the most swing-happy guys have some strikes called on them. As for the outside-the-zone pitches, some pitches just an inch or two out of the strike zone may be to a hitter's liking, while some breaking balls with late movement fool batters as they dart out of the strike zone.

Is there a difference between the leagues? Yes, a slight one. NL pitchers get more swings. Batters facing AL pitchers swung at 46.0% of pitches: 65.0% in the strike zone and 30.7% outside the zone. Batters facing NL pitchers swung at 46.8%: 66.0% in the zone and 31.3% out of it. I thought, "Must be pitchers batting," but pitchers watch a lot of strikes go by. Last year they swung at 46.1% of pitches: 57.4% in the zone and 33.8% out of it. So NL pitchers get more swings outside the strike zone in part because of pitchers flailing away when they bat. But the reason NL pitchers get more swings in the strike zone is due to something else.

Is there a difference between starters and relievers? Relievers get more swings. Starting pitchers got batters to swing at 46.4% of pitches: 65.4% in the strike zone and 30.9% outside the zone. Relievers got swings at 47.7% of pitches: 67.2% in the strike zone and 31.9% outside the zone. Relievers, as I've mentioned earlier, come in and throw gas for an inning or so, so they get more strikeouts, almost one more per nine innings than starters. 

Is there a difference between right-handed and left-handed pitchers? Lefties got batters to swing at 46.3% of their pitches: 65.0% in the strike zone and 31.0% out of the zone. For righties, pitchers got swings 46.5% of the time: 65.7% in the strike zone and 31.0% out. The conclusion here is that left-handed pitchers induced fewer swings on pitches in the strike zone than righties, which means they must've gotten more called strikes. I have no idea why that should be. The difference isn't large, so I'm not going to worry about it.

Does it matter? Let's look at swings in the strike zone and out of the zone. First, in the strike zone. As with the previous entries, I've divided pitchers into then groups: the 10% who got the most swings in the strike zone (Group 1), the next 10% (Group 2), the next 10% (Group 3), etc. I looked at how the groups compared in ERA, WHIP (walks and hits per inning), and percentage of batters struck out, walked, or allowed a home run:
   Group ERA  WHIP   %K    %BB   %HR
     1  4.03  1.33  19.8   8.3   2.7
     2  3.45  1.22  20.7   7.4   2.4
     3  4.14  1.31  19.8   7.7   2.9
     4  4.18  1.36  18.1   7.7   2.6
     5  3.59  1.25  19.9   7.3   2.3
     6  3.87  1.30  18.6   7.7   2.6
     7  3.66  1.29  19.6   7.9   2.2
     8  4.11  1.32  20.2   7.9   2.6
     9  3.76  1.29  20.2   7.9   2.4
    10  3.92  1.34  21.9   9.5   2.5
Do you see a pattern there? I don't. I think we can safely say that getting batters to swing at pitches in the strike zone isn't correlated to pitching success.

How about pitches outside the strike zone? That's a different story completely:

   Group ERA  WHIP   %K    %BB   %HR
     1  3.20  1.13  22.0   5.8   2.3
     2  3.44  1.22  21.5   7.2   2.4
     3  3.67  1.25  20.6   6.9   2.5
     4  3.83  1.27  20.6   7.4   2.4
     5  3.73  1.27  19.8   7.3   2.4
     6  4.00  1.29  20.3   7.8   2.9
     7  3.85  1.31  19.3   8.4   2.4
     8  4.15  1.36  18.4   8.3   2.8
     9  4.44  1.47  17.2   9.6   2.5
    10  4.49  1.47  18.6  10.7   2.6
This is almost as dramatic as the impact of getting strikes, detailed in the last post: The pitchers who got the top 10% of strikes had an ERA of 3.16 and a WHIP of 1.10. Group 10 had an ERA of 4.64 and a WHIP of 1.55. It's the same pattern for pitchers who get batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone. The best pitchers get the most strikes, and they get strikes in part because they throw pitches in the strike zone but also, at least as importantly, because the get batters to swing at pitches outside the zone.

I looked at pitchers who do one well but not the other. First, pitchers who were in the top 30% of throwing pitches in the strike zone but the bottom 30% of getting swings outside the zone. The numbers are:
              ERA  WHIP   %K    %BB   %HR
             4.14  1.36  18.8   8.3   2.9
     Average 3.87  1.30  19.9   7.9   2.5

(Average is the major league average last season.)

Now, pitchers who were in the top 30% of getting batters to swing at pitches outside the strike zone but the bottom 30% of throwing pitches in the zone. The numbers for them are:

              ERA  WHIP   %K    %BB   %HR

             3.55  1.25  20.1   7.6   2.2

     Average 3.87  1.30  19.9   7.9   2.5

I wasn't expecting that. Pitchers who are good at throwing pitches in the strike zone but bad at getting batters to swing at pitches outside the zone are below-average pitchers. Pitchers who are bad at throwing pitches in the strike zone but good at getting batters to swing at pitches outside the zone are above-average pitchers. Pitchers in the former group include Rockies starters Jhoulys Chacin and Juan Nicasio, Yankees closer-in-waiting David Robertson, free agent innings eater Bronson Arroyo, and Dodgers washout Brandon League. Pitchers in the latter group include Angels starter Jered Weaver, Yankee starter Hiroki Kuroda, Pirate ace Francisco Liriano, and several top closers, indluding Jason Grilli, Mariano Rivera, Joe Nathan, and Sergio Romo. 

What We Know So Far: The best pitchers get the most strikes, in part because they throw pitches in the strike zone but also, more importantly, because the get batters to swing at pitches outside the zone.

Next, we'll see whether these rules apply to hitters as well.