The Good:

* Matusz gave up two runs in the first, but ended up pitching 2.2 solid innings. Of the 8 outs he got, 6 were on strike-outs. That makes 10 K’s in 4 IP for Matusz this Spring.

* Luke Scott getting some work in at first-base. This should have been a more prominent part of the O’s planning, but better some than none.

* Wieters twice worked himself into good hitter’s counts at 3-1 and 3-0, but flew out both times (deep to the opposite field). Nice to see, but feel free to take a base on balls once in a while. He added a single in his final at bat.

The Bad:

* Garrett Atkins being on the roster (and being paid $4.5 M this year). He didn’t play today, but this is in reference to the above regarding Luke at first.

* Mike Gonzalez had a tough inning, giving up two hits and a walk, but having a runner killed at the plate by Adam Jones(with an assist on the relay by Luke – and a lack of a slide by Brendan Harris).

* Lefty Mike Hinckley wasn’t quite so lucky, as his two hits and a walk resulted in a pair of Twins’ runs.

* The O’s bats; no runs, three hits, and three walks. Given just the 4 K’s, you have to give a little credit to the Twins’ defense (and luck).

With the 5-0 shutout loss, the Orioles drop to 1-5 for the Spring. Only the Nationals at 0-6 have been worse.

——————————————————————————————–

“I was looking at some Pitch/FX data a couple weeks ago and – as will sometimes happen – Tom Glavine popped into my mind. Specifically, the way Glavine was said to have worked the outside corner, getting a called strike and then throwing a pitch a little farther outside, and then another a little farther, and so on. As the announcers would tell it, before long Glavine would be getting strikes called on pitches a foot outside. I asked around and it seemed that no one had looked into this previously (correct me if I’m wrong), and Eric Seidman from Baseball Prospectus was kind enough to help me lay out how to go about things. (I didn’t do exactly what Eric suggested, but I wanted to thank him for the assistance.)”

The Good:

* Guthrie picked up a couple of K’s in the first inning.

* Nick Markakis took Clay Buccholz deep and gone to right. He just turned on an inside fastball and sent it out.

* Will Ohman struck out a pair, and might be strengthening his case for a spot in the pen as a lefty arm.

* 25 year-old infielder Miguel Abreu made a couple of very nice defensive plays at second-base, and picked up a couple of hits at the plate. And stole a base. Nice day, but he’s still not making the team.

* David Hernandez struck out 4 in 1.2 IP, but he did give up a solo home run.

The Bad:

* Guthrie also gave up a run on two hits and two walks in the second inning.

* Nick also struck out chasing a high fastball, and then again an off-speed pitch down and in.

* Kam The Almighty continued his Spring Training struggles, pitching a scoreless inning but giving up a couple of long flyballs and being saved twice by his defense.

* Armando Gabino gave up 3 runs on four hits, while recording just one out.

* Miguel Tejada is still batting clean-up. I really don’t approve of that turn of events. I like Dave Trembley fine, and I don’t think either line-up construction or managers in general have much of an effect, but if even one time during the regular season I see Cesar Izturis batting second and Miguel Tejada batting fourth, I’ll want Dave fired.

In what might be a script that replays itself a few times this season, the Orioles held a lead going into the later innings but Boston came back against the bullpen and ended up winning 5-4. The O’s drop to 1-4 in Spring Training.

The Good:

* Ty Wigginton had two hits, including a home run off off Verlander.

* Matt Albers did a fine job in relief, pitching 2.1 innings and giving up just a single.

* Cla Meredith also had a perfect inning, including a K.

* Rhyne Hughes hit another home run, in his only at bat of the game. That makes a team-leading three for the Spring, though I don’t think any number will get him a spot on the team.

The Bad:

* Millwood’s Orioles career didn’t get off to the best start, with Clete Thomas taking him deep. Then things got better, but only relatively speaking. He ended up getting just two outs, while giving up 6 runs on 7 hits and a walk.

* Not a great appearance for Brandon Erbe either, as he gave up three runs (including a homer).

The O’s went down early and didn’t have time to catch up, losing 9-4 to Detroit. The Birds drop to 1-3 for the Spring. Good strategy guys; best to get the losses out of the way now.

The Good:

* Chris Tillman struck out three in two perfect innings, with two of his remaining three outs being on the ground. Good signs all around.

* Adam Jones went yard for his first of the Spring – nice that it was to the opposite field as well.

* Miguel Tejada reportedly making a couple nice plays at third. He also cracked a double at the plate.

* Chorye Spoone pitched (OK). I has very high on him before his injuries, so it’s just nice to have him out on the mound.

* Hard-throwing reliever Luis Lebron struck out two in his perfect inning.

The Bad:

* Mike Gonzalez gave up a run on two hits and a walk. It wasn’t a save situation though, so obviously it doesn’t matter.

* Jake Arrieta K’ed two, but also walked a pair and gave up a hit and a run in one inning of work. Sounds like he was a little shaky. At least another half-season in the minors sounds like a good idea to me (irrespective of his Spring Training performance).

* Alfredo Simon (I didn’t actually know he was still with the team) gave up two runs in the ninth and took the loss. Not going to be the #3 starter this year (I hope).

* Nick Markakis went 0-3 and struck out twice. If the K’s means he’s willing to work deeper into counts and maybe walk more, then this might actually belong in the “Good” column.

O’s go down 5-3, and drop to 1-2 in Spring Training. I guess they’ll lose 100+ games this season.

• Swinging at pitches out of the strike-zone makes it more difficult to walk.
• Nick swung at pitches up in the zone more in 2009.
• Swung at more fastballs outside the strike-zone and fewer fastballs inside the strike-zone in in 2009.
• Chased pitches out of the zone more in counts where he was one ball away from a walk.
• Was thrown more strikes in three-ball counts.
• Not Markakis related, but we also know that I just move from point to point as ideas come to me*. Sorry about that. I realize that it probably decreases the coherence of the posts, but the search for an answer doesn’t always (or often) follow a straight path.

* This post, unfortunately, doesn’t break that pattern.

Looking at often Nick swung in all counts – still minus intentional walks – (with the horizontal axis having the total number of pitches; that is, a 1-1 count is 2 pitches, a 3-2 count is 5 pitches, etc.), here are the rates for 2008 (blue lines) and 2009 (red lines) for pitches in the zone (the top two lines) and out of the zone (the bottom two lines).

Focusing first on the in-zone rates. In 2008, Nick was more likely to act on a pitch to hit early in the count, but more willing to wait on pitches later in the count. For pitches out of the zone, he pretty much swung at least as often all the time, and much more often later in the count.

Just to make sure I’ve got everything out, here’s the swing rates (2008/2009) in each count for pitches in and out of the zone. I’ve color-coded it such that if the 2008 rate was higher by 5% or more then it’s blue, and if 2009 is higher then it’s red (otherwise, white):

I was going to say something about the jump in swing rate on 3-0 pitches, but the raw number went from 1 to 2 in a similarly small number of opportunities, so that’s really not a big deal.

As another example, look at the 1-0 pitches. In 2009, Nick took them at a higher rate when they were in the strike-zone and swung at them more when they were out of the strike-zone – perhaps because pitchers were throwing him fewer fastballs and more off-speed pitches. That’s not a good combination, and means he was going from 1-0 to 1-1 more often than 2-0 (in ‘08 it was about 38% of the time to 1-1 and 47% to 2-0 (with the remainder of PA ending on that count), and in ‘09 it was 49% and 38%).

I also find it interesting that the biggest difference occurred on pitches out of the zone with two strikes (which make up a substantial portion of his plate appearances). Despite swinging at balls much more frequently with two strikes, Nick’s overall strike-out rate fell from 19% to 15%. Maybe that’s because his contact rate on those two-strike pitches increased from 75% to 81%, as well as from 88% to 91% on pitches in the zone – possibly as a result of a much larger proportion of those pitches being fastballs . Also, pitchers were throwing him a much larger percentage of pitches in the zone with two strikes (43% to 48%), which somewhat blunted the effects of the big jump in swing rate on balls (since it was applied to fewer pitches). Perhaps pitchers figured he was going to be taking balls more after his high walk 2008 and decided to try to get him looking instead – and Nick responded by starting to swing more.

So he’s swinging at more pitches with two strikes; how well did that turn out when he put the ball in play? On pitches in the zone he hit .414 and slugged .634 in 2008 and .373/.523 in 2009, and on pitches out of the zone it was .545/.545 and .302/.372. I think that in an effort to cut down on his strike-outs, Nick started swinging more later in the count with an eye on putting the ball in play (which he did, but to worse results). His swinging K’s were pretty similar in both years, but he cut down on the called strike-threes in 2009. Also, just looking at the splits at Baseball Reference, we see that Nick still managed to walk 13% of the time when he got to two strikes in 2008, but only 7% of the time in 2009. (It was over 8% in 2006 and 2007). If you split the difference between the ‘08 and ‘09, then Nick might have walked an additional 10 times, getting his overall walk rate to 9.3%. That still would have been a little lower than expected, but seemingly more reasonable (to me, anyway) and more in-line with his overall swing rates.

That general issue might have something to do with his drop in line-drive rate as well (from a career high 21.1% to a low of 16.6%), as maybe he was just trying to get the bat on the ball, and not hitting it with as much authority. Another point in this area is the HR/FB rate, which fell to 8% after three years around 12%. Contact, but not good contact.

So, I think that’s as far as I’m going to go with this. Five posts and a whole bunch of graphs and charts later, what are the conclusions? It’s quite likely that a fair bit of Nick’s drop in walk rate is just normal variation. Things in 2008 worked out such that he walked in most circumstances in which it was a fairly likely outcome, and in 2009  just didn’t happen to work quite so well.

For the rest of it, my best guess is that Nick felt some pressure to be a run producer batting in the three and four spots in the line-up, but while also trying to cut down on his strike-outs. Those factors combined to drop his walk rate even further, and in 2010 I expect Markakis to get it back up to around ~10%. We’ll see what happens.

* He actually walked in 14.2% of his plate appearances, but 7 of those were intentional walks and I took those out.

First off, to draw a walk you need four balls. And to get to four balls, you need to get to three balls*. I think that implies** pretty strongly that a batter who can get to a 3-something count more often is going to be able to work a walk at an increased rate.

* Advanced mathematics!

** Didn’t feel like checking. If that’s wrong, feel free to let me know.

Here is the proportion of total plate appearances in which Markakis reached a three-ball count as well as the AL averages (excluding intentional walks):

and compare that to his walk rates versus the league average (again excluding intentional walks):

You can see that both the plate appearances getting to three balls and those getting to four have both slightly increased over the past few years overall. In 2006 Nick was below average in both respects, and in 2007 he was about average. In 2008, there was an increase in three-ball counts per plate appearance to 33% better than the league average (that’s comparing the two rates, and not a straight difference), and a big spike in walk rate to 66% better than league average. Had I seen that previously, my inclination would have been to think that the walk rate wasn’t really sustainable at such a high level given that disparity. In 2009 though, things went the other way. Nick got to a three-ball count a touch more than average, but ended up walking 6%* less than the average hitter. That seems low to me, and Markakis “should” have actually walked around 9% of the time. It’s nice that 2008 and 2008 are the years were there were disparities, since those are the ones that I have Pitch/FX data for.

* The difference wasn’t as big as it originally appeared, since Nick didn’t get a single intentional walk in ‘09. It seemed to be a league wide thing. After years of 530, 532, and 529 intentional walks, that number was down all the way to 409. Weird.

Here’s the pitches Nick saw in 2008 with three balls. The ones he swung at are in red, and the ones he took are in blue.

Of the 63 pitches out of the zone, Nick only swung at 14 (22%). Those pitches that he did swing at were mostly quite close to the strike-zone (especially if you were to account for the fact that lefties get pitches off the outside corner called strikes more often than right-handed hitters), and 10 of them were on 3-2 counts. That discipline helps explain how Nick was able to convert 52% of his plate appearances getting to three balls into walks (well above the league average of 42%).

Now here’s 2009:

Nick swung at 21 of 51 pitches out of the strike-zone, which at over 41% is nearly double the rate from 2008. Those pitches that he swung at tended to be a little farther away from the zone than the comparable pitches were from the previous year as well (though umps did appear to be calling pitches that were a little farther off the corner in ‘09, so I’d forgive him for some of those outside pitches). Interestingly,the same proportion of those 21 swings came with two strikes (15 out of 21, versus 10 out of 14 above). Overall, Markakis was able to turn a three-ball count into a base on balls only 38% of the time (league average still 42%).

In 2008 it looks like pitchers were either going to challenge Nick with a pitch in the middle of the plate (in which case he’d swing) or go outside the zone (in which case he’d take). Last year, it appears that they were trying harder to throw strikes on the outside portion of the plate, and if Markakis picked up on that then he might be more inclined to swing at pitches that weren’t as close as in ‘08 because it was harder to differentiate a ball from a strike.

So since pitchers were willing to throw strikes in three-ball counts more often in 2009 (63.3% of pitches in the zone versus 59.6% in 2008), perhaps Nick thought he better start swinging more overall – and perhaps it just so happened that the more aggressive approach resulted in the jump in balls swung at (since the rate of strikes swung at was already high).

Even in the best case scenario, with Nick not swinging at any pitches outside the zone in 2009, the ump calling all of those balls, and assuming none of those swings occurred in the same plate appearance (which some did, but go with it), Markakis’ walk total would still only have gone up by 21. That is a lot of walks, but it only brings his total up to 77 – that’s a 10.8% walk rate (almost exactly half-way between his ‘08 and ‘09 walk rates) – and would have been a walk in 52% of his three-ball counts (the same as 2008). Even if Nick was relatively perfect when he got to ball three in 2009, he still wouldn’t have come close to repeating his ‘08 OBP. Realistically, he would have upped his walk rate by ~1% by taking an approach more consistent with 2008. Part of that is on the pitchers in these situations, and part of that is on Nick working the count to get to three balls. That’ll have to wait until part five.

The Good:

* Felix Pie led off the game with a home run against Big Nyquil (Jeff Niemann), and then later tripled. Not reacting to this game, but Pie should get a lot of at bats this year, in my opinion.

* Brian Matusz struck out the side in his first innings of work, including getting Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria. Less good was the home run he gave up to Sean Rodriguez in his second inning – which he only got one out in (another K) before being removed. Rodriguez also went yard yesterday, by the way. He might not have a place on their team, but that’s a nice problem to have.

* Koji had a quick scoreless inning. As did Jason Berken and Wilfrido Perez.

* Justin Turner – looking to get a utility spot on the team – hit a game-tying home run in the top of the ninth inning.

The Bad:

* Mark Hendrickson gave up a couple runs on three hits in a walk in one inning pitched.

* Kam The Almighty was not quite so… mighty, giving up a run, a hit, and a walk.

* Pedro Florimon and Rhyne Hughes both went 0-2 with a pair of K’s.

The Rays pulled out a 6-5 win in the bottom of the ninth. The O’s fall to 1-1 in Spring Training, which means they’re guaranteed to finish the regular season at .500.

• Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CamdenCrazies.
• Tweet the following message (you can mostly copy and paste):

XX O’s Wins RT @CamdenCrazies Follow, ReTweet, & predict the # of O’s wins for a chance to win a $25 MLB.com gift-card http://bit.ly/cJsy2S

Where the XX is the number of games you think the Orioles are going to win in 2010.

• And on March 14th, I’ll randomly select one person to get a $25 gift-card to MLB.com (the one I picked up at the Orioles FanFest).

I know a lot of readers aren’t on Twitter, but I recommend it – if only so we can converse during Orioles games, which I’ll often be tweeting during instead of live-blogging as I sometimes did last season. If you want to sign-up just for this, that’s cool too. Feel free to say hey though.

* I’m personally not a huge fan of these types of “follow me on Twitter and I’ll give you stuff” promotions, but seeing as how I won the Most Active Blog award in large part due to conversing with people via Twitter, I thought it would be nice to reward those people for making me look good.

First up, a guest post at the Fantasy Lounge about the improvements in the Orioles’ starting rotation from 2009 to 2010, and the potential for the future. The intro:

“The Baltimore Orioles are in the midst of a streak of 12 straight losing seasons, and a big reason for that has been some bad pitching – especially starting pitching. Going in to last year, the team had posted an ERA north of 5 for consecutive seasons, and every year I’d think “well, it has nowhere to go but down, right?” But then it wouldn’t really get worse. Since Andy MacPhail took over as general manager, he has emphasized developing pitching in the organization and O’s farm system has become flush with top pitching prospects. One can already see a big step forward at the major league level as well, even if the results on the field don’t completely bear it out yet.”

I also did a quick hit with Ray Flowers and Kyle Efrink at Fantasy Buffet about all sorts of O’s topics, including the series about Nick Markakis’ walk rate that I’m currently doing, Adam Jones’ injury history, who the best O’s starter will be in 2010, what we can expect from Garrett Atkins, Matt Wieters and Mike Gonzalez, and what would constitute a successful year for the team. I come on at around the 38 minutes mark.