In coming weeks, you will have innumerable opportunities to read previews of the upcoming season. I dug through last year's results and came up with items for each team that you probably won't see in the previews but that I thought were interesting.
I started with the National League (here, here, and here), the AL West, and the AL Central. So this is it.
Boston Red Sox, 97-65: Maybe it's me, but the Red Sox going from worst to first last season didn't get all the fanfare it might've. Probably nobody really believed it was a last place club to start out with.
What changed? Well, when you score 119 more runs and give up 150 fewer from one season to the next, good things happen. But what caused those improvements? Let me point to two less obvious things. On offense, the team had 153 more walks, almost one per game, going from second-to-last in the AL to second. Only two players on the 2012 team got 40 walks. In 2013, there were eight. That's a lot of baserunners. As for pitching, it was a story of the starters, whose ERA fell from 5.19 in 2012 to 3.70 in 2013, largely because of a lot more strikeouts (18% higher rate of strikeouts per plate appearance) and a lot fewer home runs (21% lower rate per batter).
Tampa Bay Rays, 92-71: The Rays play their home games at Tropicana Field, a pitchers' park. Even though they had a decent offense last year, as evidenced by their sixth-best OPS in the league in road games, they scored only a league-average 4.3 runs per game. That meant their pitchers had to rely on limited run support. In games in which the offense supplied scored 3-5 runs, the average American League team went 21-18 with a 3.99 ERA. The Rays pitchers flourished, leading the league with a 32-12 record and a 2.77 ERA. The next best team, the Red Sox, had a winning percentage 127 points lower and an ERA 0.62 runs higher when receiving 3-5 runs of support.
New York Yankees, 85-77: As I pointed out in my NL West comment about the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team's performance in games decided by one run is usually unstable. Most teams win about half of such games, and a team that's an outlier, either by winning a lot of them or losing a lot of them, is more typically a beneficiary or victim of luck than anything else. Teams with a great record in one-run games generally do worse in those games the next year, and teams that have a really bad record in one-run games usually improve. The Yankees were 30-16 in one-run games last year, the best record in the American League. They are likely to do worse this year in one-run games, regardless of all the free agents they signed over the winter.
Baltimore Orioles, 85-77: Skeptical about my Yankees comment? Just look at the Orioles. In 2012, somewhat famously, they had a 29-9 record in one-run games, the best in the majors. Some pointed to the team's strong bullpen and winning attitude, while detractors attributed it to luck. The skeptics won out, as last year, the team's one-run record swung to 20-31, the worst in the league. (Actually, the Astros, at 18-36 were worse, but given that their winning percentage in one-run games, .333, was better than their record in other games, .306, you can't really say they were unlucky.) If the O's can split the difference and play .500 ball in one-run games this year, they'll have a better record, if not a better narrative.
Toronto Blue Jays, 74-88: The Jays were probably the most disappointing team in the league last year. After big moves in the offseason to add Jose Reyes, Melky Cabrera, Mark Buehrle, Josh Johnson, and defending NL Cy Young winner R.A. Dickey, they were picked by some to win the division. Instead, they improved by only one game from 2012, finishing in last with a 74-88 record, done in by defense (fourth-most errors in the league), pitching (third-most runs allowed), and injuries. Only the offense, which scored more runs per game (4.40) than average (4.33), was OK.
Except at second base. The worst-hitting position in the American League was Toronto's second base. Blue Jays keystoners managed just a .216/.258/.297 slash line. How bad is that? Three pitchers (minimum 50 plate appearances) had a higher batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage.
Here is the story behind this series.
In the first entry, we determined that just under 45% of pitches are in the strike zone, and pitchers who get it in the strike zone regularly, particularly those who exceed 46%, do better than those who don't. But I noted that throwing into the strike zone isn't the same as getting a strike, because the umpire can get the call wrong in or out of the zone and the batter may swing at a pitch outside the strike zone. So now we're going to just look at strikes.
How often is a pitch a strike? Per Fangraphs, of the 709,916 pitches thrown last season, 451,242 were strikes. That's 63.6%.
Is there a difference between the leagues? A little bit: 63.4% in the American League, 63.7% in the National League. I'm guessing here, but I assume the difference is due to pitchers batting. We've all seen pitchers flailing away at pitches outside the strike zone.
Is there a difference between starters and relievers? Starters get strikes on 63.7% of pitchers, relievers 63.4%. That surprised me since, as we saw in the last post, relievers throw more pitches in the strike zone. Digging deeper, AL starters and relievers are about the same: 63.4% starters, 63.3% relievers. The larger difference is in the NL: 63.8% starters, 63.4% relievers. Again, I assume that's because starters are more likely to face the other team's pitcher than relievers, who are more likely to face a pinch hitter with better strike zone command
Is there a difference between right-handed and left-handed pitchers? Not enough to care about. It's 63.4% for lefties, 63.5% for righties.
Does it matter? I broke all pitchers into ten groups, based on the percentage of their pitches that were strikes. The top group, Group 1, had strike percentages between 67.7% (NL Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw) and 83.3% (the Phillies' John McDonald, who got 10 strikes on the 12 pitches he threw - the most for a guy you've heard of is 73.9% for Boston's closer Koji Uehara). The lowest 10%, Group 10, got strikes on less than 60.5% of their pitches. Here's how the 10 groups fared in terms of 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 3.16 1.10 22.0 4.8 2.4
2 3.39 1.17 21.8 6.4 2.5
3 3.80 1.23 20.3 6.5 2.7
4 3.52 1.24 20.4 7.1 2.3
5 3.72 1.25 20.9 7.8 2.7
6 3.86 1.32 19.0 7.3 2.5
7 4.00 1.33 19.8 8.4 2.5
8 4.14 1.39 20.0 9.6 2.5
9 4.61 1.47 17.4 9.3 2.5
10 4.64 1.55 16.9 12.3 2.5
This is a lot more dramatic than the chart in the last entry, which divided pitchers by their ability to pitch in the strike zone. Throw out the freak ERA for Group 3 (or, more accurately, blame it on CC Sabathia, Dan Haren, R.A. Dickey, and Joe Blanton), and every successive group is worse than the one before it. Getting strikes is clearly important, the more the better. The top 10, Group 1, has starters like Kershaw, Cliff Lee, David Price, and Jordan Zimmermann, and relievers like Uehara, Mariano, and Kenley Jansen. The best pitchers get the most strikes.
A fair question to ask: Why is getting strikes a bigger determinant of pitching success than getting pitches in the strike zone? Ah, that's where things start to get interesting. Next post.
What We Know So Far: The more strikes a pitcher gets, the better he fares.
More time paging through the Bill James Handbook:
- Among players active in 2013, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez
are 1-2, in that order, in career games, plate appearances, at bats, and hits. Rodriguez and
Jeter are 1-2, in that order, in career total bases and runs scored. They’re tied for 1-2 in
seasons played.
- Jeter is also third in career strikeouts, third in being hit by pitches, and third
in grounding into double plays.
- The Seattle Mariners ordered the most intentional walks in
the AL, 48, in spite of the fact that their opponents scored one or more runs following
the intentional walk 29 times, the most in the majors. No other AL team had
more than 38 intentional walks. The Cincinnati Reds allowed 64 intentional walks and got
out of the inning with no runs scored 46 times, both the most in the majors.
- You know how the knuckleball is hard to control? Toronto’s
R.A Dickey was in the strike zone with 46.7% of his pitches, the fifth-most
among major league starters. The Phillies’ Cliff Lee was the only pitcher with
over half his pitches in the strike zone.
- Baserunners stole 36 bases when Boston’s John Lackey
was on the mound. No other pitcher had more than 25 stolen bases allowed.
- The Angels’ Mike Trout’s average home run traveled 420
feet, the longest in the majors. He also went from first to third on singles 27
times, easily the most in the majors. I wonder if that’s ever happened before.
- You may have heard that the Cardinals led the majors in
batting with runners in scoring position last year. They had five of the top
six such batters in the NL last season: Allen Craig .454, Matt Holliday .390,
Matt Carpenter .388, Carlos Beltran .374, Yadier Molina .373.
- Among American League batters, Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera
swung at the first pitch the most (39.7% of plate appearances) and Minnesota’s
Joe Mauer swung at the first pitch the least (6.8%). Given that they were 1-2
in batting average, I think we can conclude that swinging at the first pitch
isn’t a particularly useful stat.
- There were 14 relief pitchers (minimum 50 innings pitched)
with an ERA below 2.00 in 2013. That includes Luke Hochevar of the Royals
(1.92), who nonetheless has a 5.10 career ERA over 190 games in seven seasons.
- The Phillies’ Kevin Frandsen led the majors in pinch hits,
with 14 (in 56 at bats). Evan Gattis of Atlanta had four home runs, a double,
and a single in ten pinch-hit at bats, giving him a .600/.692/1.900 slash line.
