From watching out-of-market games on my cable company's baseball package, I have observed a curious and maddening practice by network graphics people and/or sports-broadcast producers regarding the statistics they provide on pitchers.

I have to say I haven't taken note of whether my complaint applies to the graphics people's practice with starting pitchers, but it definitely applies to the graphics people's treatment of relievers.

And though a few nationwide cable companies are represented in the package, Fox Sports Net seems to be the most prevalent and thus the biggest offender.

When a reliever comes into a game, the graphics people will list his ERA, win-loss record, number of saves, number of innings pitched--and his strikeouts (or strikeout-to-walk ratio). Nowhere is the number of hits the reliever has given up.

Here's what I would ask the graphics people/sports-broadcast producers if given the chance: WHO CARES HOW MANY BATTERS A PITCHER--ESPECIALLY A RELIEVER--STRIKES OUT??!! A pitcher could strike out the side and give up 10 runs on 19 hits, for cripe's sake!

Are all the sports producers or graphics people really so baseball illiterate that they don't realize hits given up is a much more meaningful measure of a pitcher's effectiveness than his strikeout total or his strikeout-to-walk ratio? Do they realize it and just condescend to the viewers? Or am I in the wrong here?

Thank goodness the YES Network producers/graphics people haven't yet given in to this folly. They provide the number of hits a reliever has surrendered every time the bullpen door opens.

And a disclaimer: I did see Fox Sports Net West 2 tonight give Billy Wagner's hits-given-up total tonight when he came into the game against the Dodgers. It was the first time in a long time I have seen a Fox Sports Net broadcast provide that information.

Descending soapbox. Thanks for viewing.

I agree with you, sort of. The stats you cite are only meaningful when placed in context. Strikeout-to-walk ratio is a fair measure of a pitcher's effectiveness, but it works best when tied to innings pitched. (It's helpful to note that pitchers who strike out fewer than five batters per nine innings are rarely effective for a sustained stretch of seasons.)

But I hardly see this as a worthy subject for a rant. Better to have all the numbers available and let us smarter baseball observers place them in our context then to not have them made available at all.

Ah, well ... one day BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and DIPS (defense-independent pitching statistics), as well as WHIP and various park-effects metrics will become commonplace and take us all forward whether we like it or not.

Thanks, Wabber.

I'm nowhere near a stathead, so I wouldn't know if the metrics you wrote about are real or fictional (aside from WHIP, which I've heard of). But you know the statistic I do think is highly relevant regarding relievers' effectiveness? Inherited runners scored.

I would gladly sacrifice knowing the number of hits a reliever has surrendered if I could know instead how many runners he has inherited and how many have scored. Granted, some of those will be owing to passed balls and other errors by the defense, but the majority of them will be owing to the pitcher's (in)effectiveness.

When I'm looking at a boxscore and am interested enough in the team, I'll look at the "Inherited runners scored" line to see how effective the relievers were.

I refuse to watch ball games on Fox partly because whoever's In Charge Of Stuff bombards viewers with over-produced graphics containing stats that don't mean a damned thing. (Also because of bizarre camera angles — in one game I did watch for about 15 minutes, they kept cutting to an airship camera directly over the infield — and because the announcers can't seem to shut up for a single second. Also, goddammit, during the game is no time for an interview with anyone directly involved in it, and these interviews are invariably inane, anyway.)

Regarding pitchers, I'm also befuddled by this obsession with giving the speed of nearly every pitch. I can see it every once in awhile — "Got him on a 98 mph fast ball" would go over well on a crucial late-inning at-bat — but any major-league player will tell you all but the fastest pitch is hittable if it's flat. Tell me or show me how a fast ball is moving; then I'll know something worth knowing. (If a pitcher threw 95 in the first inning and is still throwing 95 in the seventh, that tells me something too. But I don't need to know the speed of a breaking ball on 2-and-1.)

</rant>

Oh, and Wordy, can we not mention last night's Dodgers-Phillies game again? :fume:

Agreed, Oed, on the overproduced graphics and inane in-game interviews with managers.

Regarding the pitch speeds, I'd agree; I think most of the time they are irrelevant. Sometimes it's fun to see exactly how slowly an eephus pitch comes in, though. And as you say, it's cool to know if a guy is throwing 95 in the 7th as he was in the 1st.

Sorry about the raw nerve regarding the Dodgers' game last night! I guess Broxton got touched up pretty well.

Did you see anything in your paper or elsewhere about this subject, reported by Bob Raissmann in the New York Daily News on Aug. 7? So much for family values in L.A., eh? Whoopsie-daisy!

Sheff whiffs on Dodger affair

In the upcoming edition of New York magazine, as first reported in the Daily News, Gary Sheffield, among other things, says the Dodgers are a more "family-oriented" team than the Yankees.

Considering what has gone on lately in Dodgersville, Sheffield's contention is impossible to believe.

Trinka Lowe, wife of Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe, has revealed, in a variety of venues (including a nationally syndicated radio show), that her husband is having an affair with Carolyn Hughes, co-host of the Dodgers pre and postgame shows on Fox Sports Net West 2.

This wicket has gotten so sticky for the "family-oriented" team, that FSN suits have already dumped Hughes from her Dodgers gig.

Sheffield should be relieved to know that there is no Yankee-panky happening behind the scenes at the YES Network.

Oeditpus, the worst part of the radar gun readings at ballparks is that they're rarely accurate. Readings vary wildly, depending on the brand of radar gun, the angle at which they're being used, the way they're calibrated ... even external factors like extreme light and heat can affect the readings. It's widely believed that, like players height-and-weight listings in team programs, radar-gun "cheating" of 3 to 5 MPH is commonplace by home ballparks.

For instance, last night, "King Felix" Hernandez, the new young pitching stud in Marinerland, was listed at 6-3, 170 pounds. Looking at his portly physique on the hill, there was no way in hell he was an ounce under 200.

It seems to me that good old ERA is the most reliable measure of a pitcher's performance, even a relief pitcher's over time. I agree that, in the case of a reliever, you might want to use additional stats to complete the picture.

Even ERA is not perfect. To compare pitchers fairly, you must take into account their home parks. Koufax was a great pitcher, but he also had the good fortune to pitch in Dodger Stadium. Marichal, his perennial rival, pitched in Candlestick, a hitter's ballpark. If their ERA is adjusted accordingly, the gap between them narrows (though Koufax still comes out ahead).

ERA is a good start, but doesn't account for things that matter like park effects, playing surface, quality of defense and the things that a pitcher alone can control. It's just too broad a stat to be really useful. I suggest a quick spin through the pitching metrics at baseballprospectus.com to become acquainted with how to use these enhanced tools to better appreciate the weaknesses and strengths of the pitchers on your favorite team.

I forget if it was Jon Miller (Giants) or Charlie Steiner (Dodgers), but I recently heard a radio guy say he was gonna get his own radar gun because the park gun and another one monitored in the radio booth rarely agree.

Wordy, a friend near San Diego told me the other day about Lowe's wife blowing the whistle on him. Reminded me of Yankees Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich (who came up with the Dodgers) swapping wives circa 1970.

ADK — Candlestick a hitters' yard? I'd like to hear more on that. It's more or less accepted that the wind off the bay cost Mays the 55 homers he needed to pass Ruth, and Marichal pitched only two years in Candlestick after it was enclosed, which cut down the wind but didn't stop it. (I've experienced that wind. It was nasty even in the lower deck.) As for Dodger Stadium, it's more of a hitters' park at night when the air isn't as thick with smog. Koufax also had the good fortune of a hell of a defense behind him much of the time, as well as one of the craftiest catchers in baseball, Johnny Roseboro.

Yeah, I don't endorse ERA all that heartily for judging how well a reliever is doing. As you said, ADK, over time it's bad for any pitcher to have a high ERA, but it's better to have a full complement of stats to put the ERA into context.

Oed, yeah, I'm a little too young for the Kekich-Peterson wife-swapping days, but that was wild. I didn't know Kekich had come up with the Dodgers. And do I recall correctly that the swap worked out for one of the couples, who are still married, but not for the other, who got divorced? I don't recall which union ended up working and which didn't, though.

And, Oed, I heartily agree with you about Candlestick's freezing temps. I went to a Giants night game at Candlestick in the last week of June 1997. The last week of June, mind you. In New York we're well into shorts and T shirts by the last week of June. I shivered at Candlestick--in the upper deck--that night as much as I have ever shivered in the middle of October at Yankee Stadium, which is to say, plenty. Unbelievable. And it had been a glorious day that day in San Francisco--mid-70s, brilliant sunshine, cool breeze blowing.

I've heard the climate at Pac Bell (or whatever it's being called nowadays) is much more forgiving. True? I'd love to get out there to see a game.

I'm basing my assertion on Total Baseball from the early 1990s. Years ago, when I was flipping through it, I was astounded to learn that it did not rate Koufax as the best pitcher in his league for any year of his career. The Total Pitcher rating takes into account a pitcher's overall contribution, offensive and defensive, to his team. Koufax lost points for pitching in a pitcher's park (according to TB) and for being a lousy hitter. Marichal gained points for pitching in a hitter's park and for being a pretty good hitter.

I'll take a look at those stats later today. I am aware of some other modern stats, such as WHIP, K-BB ratio, etc. They are interesting and useful. Ultimately, though, what we want to know is how many runs a pitcher will give up. It seems to me that ERA, despite its faults, is the best measure of that. It can be adjusted for park effects (which would include playing surface). I'm not sure differences on defense affect ERA all that much (but don't hold me to that). In fact, some have argued we ought to look at just runs allowed rather than "earned" runs allowed. A team is more likely to commit errors if a pitcher gets a lot of ground balls.

I've seen Koufax used as an example of how Total Baseball overvalues pitchers' contributions on offensive.
Koufax, a hero of mine, was one of the worst hitters imaginable, but it's difficult to imagine a system that wouldn't rate at least one of his seasons as the best in baseball.
Drysdale was a tough competitor and one of the best hitters among pitchers ever. He wasn't nearly as good a pitcher as Koufax or Marichal.

Marichal was one of the best pitchers of his time, overshadowed by his flamboyant older teammate, Willie Mays, and the Koufax-Drysdale combination in the same league and state. (I can remember Mays, Koufax and Drysdale playing themselves in an episode of a sitcom.)
The Giants used to set their rotation so that Marichal went against the best pitcher of other teams, including Koufax and Drysdale.
Marichal was one of the best hitters among pitchers. He had a long, successful career. Some people never forgave him for his bloody clubbing of Dodger catcher John Roseboro. Also, the game wasn't as comfortable with Latin stars in the 1950s and 1960s.

I'd say Marichal was slightly underrated by the public, Drysdale was overrated and Koufax, after a slow start to his career and an early end because of injury, was one of the best of all time at his peak.

Radar guns for timing pitchers are a joke. They work when the same is used to compare pitchers during a game, but as others here have said, the importance of a fastball's speed is overrated and the accuracy of guns doubtful.

At Orioles home games they flash the speed of every unhit pitch and what kind of pitch it was. Sometimes you'll see "fastball--81 mph" for a straight change or a hanging curve the batter lets go by. Who needs that?

More significant is the difference in speed between a pitcher's fastballs and slow breaking pitches. To a lesser extent the similarity in speed between fastballs and sliders matters.

Location and setups are more important than speed.

What you say about Total Baseball may be true. If you look only at the book's pitching stats--basically, adjusted ERA--I believe you'll find that Koufax comes out ahead of Marichal in his prime years. I can't say for sure that TB rated Koufax the best pure pitcher in those years, but that seems likely. I'll try to check that.

Koufax was indeed a "cancer bat" (.097 lifetime), but he did have two homers. This compared to Drysdale, who once had seven in one season and was often used by Walter Alston as a pinch-hitter.

I've noticed that pitchers' best hitting years tend to coincide with their best pitching years. Koufax hit .177 with two doubles in 1965, his best year at bat. That year he went 26-8, 2.04 with an ungodly 27 complete games, eight shutouts and a then-record 382 strikeouts. (And the Dodgers were world champs.)

This just points up how important it is to build your winning team around quality pitching and defense. If you get great defenders, especially up the middle, then getting more ground balls can be a plus because you'll get more double plays and force-outs. And most analysts agree that a pitcher who induces more ground balls than fly balls is preferable because in general, ground balls are more likely to become outs thatn the more unpredictable balls in the air, which turn into a higher proportion of doubles, triples and home runs. Teams that think they can afford to sacrifice defense to get better hitters in the lineup are not subscribing to a winning strategy, because banking on winning a lot of 12-9 slugfests is too unstable an approach to be successful in the seasonal long run.

History has proven that pitchers who induce mostly ground balls while also striking out seven or more batters per nine innings are the best pitchers in baseball. See Baseball Prospectus or The Hardball Times for hard-data studies that verify this.[/quote]

Here is a list of the pitchers who best embody the high-strikeout, high-ground-ball-to-flyball-ratio profile I mentioned:

Brandon Webb: 6.62 K/9, 4.25 G/F
Roy Halladay: 6.86 K/9, 2.60 G/F
AJ Burnett: 8.04 K/9, 2.57 G/F
Chris Carpenter: 8.46 K/9, 2.06 G/F
Carlos Zambrano: 8.04 K/9, 1.78 G/F
Daniel Cabrera: 8.62 K/9, 1.71 G/F
Andy Pettitte: 6.81 K/9, 1.67 G/F
Chan Ho Park: 6.69 K/9, 1.60 G/F
Jeremy Bonderman: 6.94 K/9, 1.53 G/F
John Smoltz: 6.62 K/9, 1.51 G/F
Freddy Garcia: 6.11 K/9, 1.48 G/F
Roy Oswalt: 6.34 K/9, 1.43 G/F
Roger Clemens: 8.02 K/9, 1.41 G/F
C.C. Sabathia: 6.66 K/9, 1.40 G/F
Matt Clement: 7.70 K/9, 1.40 G/F

Basically, it’s the best pitchers in baseball and Chan Ho Park.

I believe you, Wabber, but these pitchers are the best in baseball not because they induce groundballs or strike out a lot of batters but because they give up the fewest runs. The stats you cite are useful in that they predict ERA or some modification thereof. I still say if I had to pick one stat to measure a pitcher, it would be ERA (or adjusted ERA).

Another shortcoming of ERA is that it has poor projectability in anything other than a major league context. Smart scouts who want to know whether a pitching prospect in the minors or in high school or college is doing will rightfully ignore ERA as a product of its particular context and look at things a pitcher alone can control ... not just speed, mechanics and repertoire, but other things such as his groundball/flyball ratio. That will tell you much better than most things whether the pitcher has a solid foundation for future success.

I have to go with Wabber on this one. ERA gives you a result -- but stats anterior to it give you a reason for that result and a clue about the future.

And, ADKBrown, part of the point is that you don't HAVE to go with just one. The "new" stats are just as fun once you learn to cerebrally adjust to assigning meaning and relative value to each one. I find knowing each pitcher's WHIP, BABIP and DIPS make me feel not only smarter about what's going on in a game, but more sharply engaged in each at-bat.

They might ignore a fat ERA if they see the other tools, or signs of them, since conditions exist in scholastic and low-minors ball that can affect ERA — poor fields, two umpires, infielders without range. But if a kid has an ERA under 3, I'd call that a pretty good sign that he's not gonna give up many runs under better circumstances.

Remember, too, there's better coaching in pro ball, and some ball clubs have better teachers than others. A case in point is Jeff Nelson, who's been with Seattle (current), the Yankees and Texas over the last several seasons. When he played Class A ball in my hometown, I doubt anybody in the stands or press box ever thought he'd make it to the majors, as his ERA and walks-per-nine ratio were both in the mid-fives. All he had, seemingly, was heat. But the Mariners organization saw something in him and promoted him to Chattanooga the next year, and in a couple more years he was in Seattle. I don't know the particulars, but I'd guess he learned control, and probably another pitch.

That, and "Nellie" induces a very high amount of groundballs to fly balls. I love watching him pitch, with his funky sideways motion and the sharp juking bite to his slider.

I just realized I stupidly forgot something in my previous post. In high-school and college ball, the playing field isn't nearly as level, metaphorically, as in pro ball, and since teams play only three times a week, a coach could spot weaker pitchers against weaker offenses. In that case, a low ERA would be misleading.

Precisely my point.

If you get a chance, do some Google-searching for Voros McCracken and his groundbreaking research and theories on DIPS — defense-independent pitching statistics. If you really want to know how good a pitcher his, isolate his stats to the things he alone controls. ERA is just too dependent on things outside a pitcher's control, as I said, like park effects, playing surface, defensive-range quality, etc. Baseball Prospectus keeps daily track of seasonal rankings of pitchers according to DIPS and a host of other statistics. Seeing how certain pitchers stack up against one another in such categories may give you the context and perspective you need to embrace these new metrics.

A good primer from an acquaintance of mine. Bear with me through the hardcore math geekery here:


The Value of a Groundball

A couple of probably useful (though hard to validate) pieces of data to begin with:

(1) The Hardball Times Glossary, explaining the “HR/Fly” concept, claims that “Research has shown that about 11% to 12% of outfield flies are hit for home runs.”

(2) Also, taking a quick average on the Hardball Times stats pages (if I’m understanding them correctly), about 12% of fly balls seem to be infield popups. This means that the overall HR/fly percentage is about 10% (with infield flies thrown into the mix).

(3) In 2003, ground balls were converted into outs 73.6% of the time. … The fly ball out percentage was 87.2%; the line drive out percentage was 27.2%. Those percentages aren’t terribly different from what I’ve seen in past seasons, maybe a bit higher than usual.

In this context, Emeigh is of course talking about balls in play (excluding home runs). Adjusting for that, about 87.2% * (1 - 10%) = 78% of fly balls are hits (whether singles, doubles, triples, or home runs).

So a typical batting average on ground balls would be about .270 (rounding to the nearest ten points), and a typical average on flies (including popups but excluding line drives) would be about .220 (assuming that Emeigh’s data are fairly representative of overall MLB performance).

But the slugging averages would be much different. I can only make a rough guess, but .300 seems reasonable for grounders (a few might sneak down the line for doubles, but triples and homers would be rare). But for fly balls (again, not counting line drives), about half of the hits are in homers, and the other half are in play with (I estimate) about 1.5 total bases per hit, for an overall average of about 2.75 total bases per flyball hit, and a slugging percentage on flyballs in the neighborhood of 2.75 * .220 = .605 (let’s round that to .600 since we’re making no pretense to precision here).

So the OPS on flies is about .820, to about .570 on groundballs. Pretty big difference, that. More precisely, a fly ball is about .300 better for the hitter on slugging (an advantage of about .30 * .34 = .10 runs per contact), and about .050 worse OBP (a disadvantage of about .05 * .43 = .02), for a net advantage of .08 runs for the batter on a flyball (or, equivalently, .08 runs for the pitcher on a grounder).

Now– still excluding line drives from the discussion– we typically see about 25 grounders-plus-flies per 9 innings (40 plate appearances, minus 6 K’s, 3 BB’s, and about 6 LD’s). An average pitcher seems to have a G/F of about 1.3 by the Hardball Times definition, or a G/(G+F) of 57%. If someone like Felix Hernandez can sustain, say, an 80% G/(G+F)– 23% better than average– that will be worth about 6 extra grounders per game, or about half a run per game.

(Note that that’s without taking credit for any advantage he might or might not have in LD%, which would be a separate discussion.)

G/F is not, of course, the biggest component of a pitcher’s success; I’d look for K rate first, BB rate second, and G/F third. But even so, in extreme cases (which it seems like Felix might be), a good groundball rate can make a significant contribution to a pitcher’s career.

The thing is, Wab, I just don't want to stat the hell out of everything. I appreciate the science of baseball, but I love it as an art.

The key is to integrate the analysis into your enjoyment. I do, and I know many others who do. It makes going to a game a zillion times more fun — we root for the bench guy who deserves to start, make quarter bets on whether the pitcher will go fastball or change on a 3-1 count, argue about whether bunting with one out and a runner on first is worth the cost of the out. Oh, yeah, and scream silly when the guy with the high OPS works the pitcher for a 11-pitch walk to load the bases with two out in the ninth. All these things elevate my love of baseball into a strata high above George-Will-Cheeseball-Poetryland.

Whew, Wabber. You lost me right after "Bear with me through the hardcore math geekery here".

I'm glad you enjoy those stats though!

Let me go at this one more time, because I believe we agree on most points. I agree, for example, that the stats cited by Wabber can help spot raw talent and predict future performance.

But can we agree that the job of a pitcher is to prevent runs, not to maintain a high G/F ratio? If so, the best measure of a pitcher's current effectiveness would tell us, on average, how many runs he gives up in a game.

ERA purports to tell us that, but Matthew and Wabber say it fails to take into account things beyond a pitcher's control, namely park effects and fielding. (Is there anything else?) I concede the point. Total Baseball's adjusted ERA, however, takes into account park effects, and it makes a difference. Koufax won the ERA title each of his last five seasons, but he topped the league in adjusted ERA in only two of those seasons (1964 and '66).

Adjusted ERA does not take into account fielding, but I question whether teams' differences in fielding would have a large impact on a pitcher's ERA over the course of a season.

Take double plays. In 1992 (last year in my TB), the Giants turned 174 DPs, most in the league. The Expos turned 113, fewest in the league. That's a difference of 61 DPs between the best and the worst. Let's say a pitcher worked 210 innings for the Expos. That's about one-seventh of the total innings played. So we might expect that, over the course of 210 innings, the Expos would fail to convert nine DPs (61/7) that would have been converted by the Giants. How many of those unconverted DPs would lead to earned runs? I'd say between three and four--enough to bump up the pitcher's ERA about 0.13 to 0.17. But that's the worst-case scenario. In most cases, the DP differences among teams might lead to an extra run or two being charged to a pitcher over a season. The effect on ERA would be negligible.

Of course, I can't be sure that fielding does not have a greater impact on ERA than this superficial analysis suggests. I'd be surprised if no one has studied the matter. But if fielding does indeed have a signficant impact, I don't see why it could not be incorporated into adjusted ERA. That would tell us what we want to know most.

You're not wrong, ADK. I guess where we differ is that I like to better understand the roots of what factors or tendencies influence a pitcher's ERA. I like to be able to use such metrics to predict what will make a prospect effective or what will make an established major league decline in performance, and when these things are likely to happen. It takes every fan's desire to play general manager to a higher level. Statistically grounded forecasting makes speculating about roster and game decisions more fun for me and makes me feel more engaged in the game — and makes for great entertaining arguments with fellow fans. And as we all know, such arguments center on who ought to be playing, where they ought to be playing and how often. A deeper knowledge of stats and their applied significance can help you give the people with whom you banter more to think about. And that, I believe, makes us more informed fans — as well as more satisfied fans and better fans.