Beyond the Box Score - All Posts

Tampa's Triumphant Turnaround, David Price, & Pitching

2013-05-19T13:00:10Z

To deny that the Tampa Bay Rays organization has made a full 180 since dropping the "Devil" in Devil Rays, slimming down to simply "The Rays," is an understatement. As the Devil Rays, Tampa lost 90 or more games in every season of their existence. Since changing their name, image, ownership, front office, and whatever else you can think of, Tampa has not lost more than 78 games in a single season. Rarely does a professional sports franchise experience such a significant turnaround, but since Stuart Sternberg and company took over in East Florida he and his cohort have done just that.

The Rays continue to operate in a small market town with a less than appealing stadium. Despite not putting together a losing season in 6 seasons, the 2013 Rays occupy the second to last spot in average attendance at home games. The team attracts on average 17,936 fans per game, more than 1,000 fewer than the team average in 2012 when they were last in average attendance. This is a franchise that deserves better, but one that continues to play indoors, on turf, in front of a crowd made up of the players' extended family and friends. It's quite pathetic.

In a piece on www.baseballanalytics.org by guest writer Peter Gammons, Gammons discusses the major strength in the Rays organization, the pitching.

"What they've accomplished has been built around pitching, and Maddon's astute usage of starting pitching, an organizational throwing and conditioning program that averaged nearly 150 starts a year out of their top five starters, and Maddon's creativity in patching together bullpens."

Before trading James Shields and Wade Davis, the Rays had an incredible wealth of pitching, both in the big leagues and in Minor League prospects. Gammons mentions that the Rays utilize position players at multiple positions, such as the amazing Ben Zobrist.

"In lieu of going out and trading for or signing power hitters, and faced with the reality that they could not afford to keep players like Carl Crawford and B,J. Upton from entering the free agent market, Friedman and Maddon put a premium on flexibility."

Gammons discusses the Rays ability to find an abundance of pitching talent, whether it be in the rule-4 draft, international market, or by way of a trade. He also delves into the mistake the organization made when choosing shortstop Tim Beckham over Buster Posey in the 2008 draft. It's still possible that Beckham becomes a solid MLB player, but when comparing him to Posey, Beckham currently stands at a massive disadvantage. Still, it is undeniable that the Rays have had much more success finding pitching than hitting. Even still, from 2008 to 2013, the Rays rank 3^rd in MLB in wRC+ behind only the Yankees and the Red Sox.

1) Yankees - 111

2) Red Sox - 107

3) Rays - 105

It seems as though the Rays understood that while 9 hitters make up a lineup, only 5 make up a starting rotation, meaning that if a team is to maximize its money, time, and effort, it should expend it on pitching over hitting. That philosophy gives a franchise with few options as many as possible. An injury to a starting pitcher can prove difficult to overcome, but with a well-stocked farm system full of talented hurlers, the Rays continuously have solid replacements. In addition, when another team loses a pitcher to injury, the Rays can utilize this to their advantage through a trade.

At the end of this article, Gammons makes a prediction.

"What Friedman, Maddon and the Rays have done is to maintain one of the best management jobs of the last decade. They did it without developing a position player since Jennings, but beginning with this June's draft, they will have to begin to draft and develop position players if their run with the game's elite is going to continue."

According to Marc Hulet of Fangraphs, 7 of the Rays top 15 prospects are position players while 8 are pitchers. Jason Parks at Baseball Prospectus put 4 of the Rays top ten prospects as position players. Now, both put top prospect Wil Myers #1, but still, it's a pattern that shows more recent success finding top-rated pitching. Still, as I mentioned above, I don't think the Rays must draft top position players; they need to draft the best players available, regardless of position.

Prospects, like money, can easily act as currency, and if the Rays cannot sign pitchers David Price, Jeremy Hellickson, or whoever fills their shoes in the future, the organization will find a suitable team with which to trade, and acquire hitting prospects or current MLB hitters they can afford. I think that while every organization makes some mistakes, the Rays make very few, and to begin to give the Rays advice on how to run their team, no matter how theoretical boarders on heresy.

Still, the Rays recently placed David Price on the disabled list with a triceps issue after Price has been worth as many fWins this season, 0.6, as Twins righty Kevin Correia, which isn't very good for last years AL Cy Young award winner. Still, according to Baseball Prospectus' pitching guru Doug Thorburn in fellow BPer Paul Sporer's 2013 starting pitcher guide:

"The Rays just know pitching, with all of their pitchers reeking of extreme mechanical efficiency. Hellickson, McGee, Moore, and Price are all products of the Tampa system, and each pitcher has elite-level pitching mechanics, a trend that is so glaring as to defy any explanations of luck. Price is perhaps the best example, as he has improved his mechanics throughout his four years in the majors, and the lefty's stuff and his statistics have advanced accordingly."

If Price's injury issues are serious, the Rays have pitchers to fill in, but the possibility of acquiring the haul they expected in a trade for the southpaw may diminish. ESPN's Buster Olney, who compares Price to a previous AL CY Young award winning lefty, has artfully written about this.

"In the end, the Twins wound up taking a deal with the Mets that netted far less than they would have expected for a Cy Young-caliber pitcher, because of all those concerns about his arm."

"... Today, the Rays are in a similar situation. Price's resume has had rival teams talking internally about the enormous package of prospects it would take to land the left-hander, but now they will want their concerns to be assuaged before they make a deal for him and offer the huge contract extension."

While Price may not end up turning into Johan Santana, the comparison exists, so it's something to consider. Unless this injury or the next few that come debilitate Price and end his career abruptly, the Rays cannot afford his next contract, and would do best to deal him.

Still, Tampa Bay epitomizes the blue-collar franchise. They get almost no fan support, have little money to utilize, seem stuck in a piss-poor stadium, but work incredibly hard, never give up, and come out on top. How Disney hasn't made a movie about this franchise yet amazes me, but scares me into thinking it's inevitable. Don't mess with Tampa Bay, they make great trades, draft well, develop well, and always find their backs up against the wall, making them the scariest and most impressive franchise in baseball.

Lineup Styles, Part One

2013-05-18T16:34:44Z

In the sabermetric world, we have found a way (wOBA) to combine OBP and SLG to create a single metric for offensive production. Since 1996, on the team level, wOBA has a .955 correlation to runs per game, so it's safe to say wOBA works pretty well. Clutch performance and baserunning are the two main factors that cause differences between the two.

As a Braves fan, I heard plenty of hype going into the season about the extreme power and strikeouts throughout the lineup. While having all that power is nice, I didn't know if it would be as valuable without a balance of OBP-heavy hitters. Without guys on base, the power would likely drive in less runs than the context-neutral wOBA would indicate. I figured the opposite would also be true, having too many OBP-heavy hitters, creating the need for more baserunners to score.

Unknown to me before starting this project, Tango did a quick post last week on his site, using his lineup generator to clone players and come up with run values. The high-OBP lineup scored about 10% more runs than the high-SLG lineup. In the comments section, he notes that the lower wOBA gets, the OBP-heavy lineups decrease production faster, eventually being passed by SLG-heavy lineups.

While all of this theory is great, actual results will really help the cement the cause. Since 1996, there have been 506 team seasons, a nice sample size for the modern-style of game. Running a simple regression, I found expected R/G given the team's wOBA. Using OBP-wOBA as offensive style, I paired style with the residual value for runs scored.

Here is the average difference in runs with each style level.

As you can see, there isn't much correlation between style and the residual runs scored. The most power-heavy team, way on the left side, is the 2010 Blue Jays, where their .334 wOBA and .312 OBP only resulted in 4.66 R/G, almost a quarter-run less than expected. It looks like there is a slight dropoff in residual runs scored with a power-heavy lineup, but sample size is also a factor. League-average OBPs are actually about 4-5 points higher than league-average wOBAs, so the '10 Toronto team was actually about 27 points below the average. The most OBP-heavy teams, the '97 Marlins and '04 Giants, were only 12 points above the average.

Over a 162-game schedule, most of the style groups only caused a single-digit run increase or decrease in expectations. In part two, I am going to break down each 2012 team by player, seeing if too many of one type of hitter hurts, having too many extreme-style hitters change things, or any other trends.

Mark Melancon Fits The Bucco's Budget and Bullpen

2013-05-18T13:00:05Z

Earlier this week, Fangraphs writer Jeff Sullivan wrote a timely and poignant report on Pirates righty* Jason Grilli. Sullivan hopped on the back of the pickup truck as it drove down the "path to MLB success." In this case the vehicle's driver was Grilli, and the path was circuitous, a bit bumpy, but since it wasn't dubbed "path to MLB failure," ended happily. Sullivan spoke of Grilli's tough times, when he was released by the Philadelphia Phillies who could have chosen him over the failed experiment we'll call Danny Baez. That anecdote led to one of my favorite excerpts from Sullivan's piece.

"So they have that to regret. But while that looks like a major mistake in hindsight, Grilli's move to Pittsburgh was such minor news at the time that Grilli broke it himself:"

More interesting than Grilli's awesome sense of humor (His nickname is Grilled Cheese) and love for the city of Pittsburgh, he's been known to sing the words to Wiz Kahlifa's Steel City anthem "Black and Yellow," is that the dominant reliever signed a miniscule, by modern day "closer" standards, 2-year $6.75 million contract with the Buccos. That's a great deal given that the Phillies currently employ the services, when he's used, of Jonathan Papelbon for $13 million per season, and that even a wild thing like Carlos Marmol will make $9 million in 2013.

Sullivan delved into more baseball depth, discussing the changes Grilli made in throwing his slider as a major part of his newfound success. Grilli shows complete dominance against right-handed batters, due in large part to that sharp breaking slider, and the velocity difference between his fastball (~94 mph on average), and his slider (~83 mph on average). Add in Grilli's 70.7% contact percentage compared to a league average of almost 80% and you've got a guy with nasty stuff, lots of strikeouts, and thus far, very few walks.

Still, as I've mentioned, this article doesn't concern Jason Grilli. Sullivan published a fine piece, but instead I will discuss Grilli's Bucco's relief-mate, Mark Melancon. First and foremost, for all of you pronouncing his name Me-lan-cone, let's get it right. According to Baseball-Reference, the proper way to pronounce the righty's last name is \meh-LAN-sen\. Basically he likes Melan"sen(d)" batters back to the dugout, and the Pittsburgh fans home happy.

So, other than another player with a weird last name, who is Mark Melancon? Melancon was drafted out of the University of Arizona in the 9^th round of the 2006 MLB rule-4 draft by the New York Yankees. Knowing full well he didn't fit into the evil empire, the Yankees traded him along with Jimmy Peredes to the Houston Astros in exchange for Lance Berkman. After a strong year with the Astros, Melancon was once again given a plane ticket and a new team after the Astros traded him to Boston in exchange for the now Oakland Athletic infielder Jed Lowrie.

After an abysmal season marred by an inability to throw the ball in the strike zone, a tendency to give up too many home runs, and a demotion to the minor leagues, the Sox traded him to the Pirates for Joel Hanrahan. In case you hadn't heard, Hanrahan recently visited with Dr. James Andrews and his scalpel, meaning he'll be good as new in about 12 months.

Melancon throws three pitches, a four-seam fastball, cut-fastball, and curveball. Melancon's pitching motion isn't all over the place. He begins by lifting his front leg and arms at the same time, doing so quickly, with little extra movement. When he comes to his balance point, just before breaking his arms, he begins to rock back on his back foot, which screws up his balance. Still, as is the case for many pitchers, he uses that imbalance to his advantage. The rocking back completely hides the ball from the batter's eye, and when he pushes forward towards the plate, he swings his arm like an old-time pitching machine, almost wind-milling the ball to the plate. This over the top motion combined with the tilt at the top make it seem to a hitter as if the ball is coming out of nowhere, or better yet from behind Melancon's head. Check out a link of Melancon striking out Bryce Harper here.

Given that Melancon throws a straight fastball, a cutter, and a curveball, right-handed hitters especially must have difficulty discerning whether a 92 mph cutter away or 82mph looping curveball is forthcoming. For lefties, this isn't as much of an issue, but if said lefties have even a little trouble picking up the cutter, it may be too late, the pitch will have already buzzed in on their hands, making it difficult to drive, let alone keep the bat in one piece.

Interestingly, Melancon has gained greater success in 2013 by simplifying his repertoire. In 2011 and 2012 he used a changeup, and utilized his full basket of pitches more often, as opposed to 2013. This season, Melancon has thus far made use mostly of his cutter, throwing out the changeup completely, and moving away from his curveball and four-seam fastball.

	To RHB
	Fourseam	Cutter	Curve	Change Up
2011	32%	33%	29%	1%
2012	28%	29%	37%	1%
2013	14%	72%	14%	-

	To LHB
	Fourseam	Cutter	Curve	Change Up
2011	38%	12%	26%	5%
2012	35%	20%	22%	9%
2013	18%	65%	18%	-

While pitch usage and velocity prove important to any pitcher, it is that simple real estate adage that constitutes the most vital aspect to any pitcher. Location, location, location! In this department Melancon has excelled in 2013. To left-handed batters he pounds the cutter in on their hands, and when he misses with the pitch, does so low in the zone, instead of in the middle of the plate. He uses his curveball as a back door pitch, throwing it to the outer half of the strike zone, often burying as a ball in the dirt, making it a formidable 2-strike pitch.

Against right-handed batters, his location varies very little. He throws the cutter towards the outside corner, utilizing it like Grilli's slider, a pitch that looks juicy out over the middle of the plate, but cuts just enough towards the corner or further outside, causing righties to either swing and miss or make weak contact, and most likely hitting the ball on the ground or popping it up in the infield. He utilizes his curveball sparingly to righties, but when used, Melancon throws it towards the outside corner, and given the pitch's drop in velocity combined with nice looping action, it causes many right-handed batters to pop the pitch up. When he uses his four-seam fastball to righties, the pitches are populated more in the lower part of the strike zone, making for fewer mistakes ending in home runs.

Combine Melancon's new pitching philosophy and success with his incredible valuable miniscule contract of $521,000 in 2013, and the aforementioned Grilli, and the Buccos have themselves an awesome back end of the bullpen. Not to leave you without some of Melancon's awesome 2013 outcomes thus far in 2013, here's a few. Melancon has struck out 22 hitters (28.2% K percentage), and walked 1 batter (1.3% BB percentage). He has a 67.3% ground ball percentage, which is 3^rd amongst all relievers in baseball, a 100% left-on-base percentage, 0.43 earned run average, and 1.69 FIP. Most importantly, Melancon has surrendered only one home run thus far in 21 innings pitched, as opposed to 2012 when he gave up 8 round-trippers in 45 innings pitched.

Jason Grilli can't have all the fun, and thus cannot take the credit for all of the Pirate's bullpen success. More importantly, congrats to Bucco's General Manager Neal Huntington who traded away a more expensive reliever in Hanrahan who's currently injured and wasn't pitching well otherwise, for a cheaper, better, and more efficient model. The Pirates get incredible value out of their players, and Melancon epitomizes that frugality and efficiency.

*Note, I would usually use the term "closer" when describing Grilli, but I hate the term, the idea, and think it should be thrown out with the garbage on whichever day your trash is collected.

**Statistics and charts used in this piece came from Frangraphs.com, Brooksbaseball.net, and Texasleaguers.com

Kevin Gregg Re-emerges in Chicago

2013-05-17T15:24:05Z

Over the past few days, many saber-slanted websites (this one included) have devoted articles to the success of pitchers that weren't necessarily expected to see such good fortunes this season. Two days ago, Blake Murphy profiled Pirates' starter A.J. Burnett, and yesterday we were treated to columns on Pittsburgh closer Jason Grilli, Indians' lefty Scott Kazmir, and Diamondbacks closer Heath Bell. Being an aficionado of pitchers with great stories, I have loved the onslaught of quality content. Still, while I agree that quartet of hurlers are all relative surprises; none of them strike me as the most shocking success story of the young season.

No, that distinction belongs to Cubs' closer Kevin Gregg.

That's because as of May 16, Kevin Gregg has thrown ten innings without allowing an earned run. Over those 10 frames, he has faced 39 batters surrendering just five hits and four walks and striking out 12 batters. Because it's just 10 innings, I'm probably making too big a deal out of his success, but remember this is the same pitcher that:

Was released by the Dodgers during Spring Training. The Dodgers' pen ranks 25th in the Majors in ERA.
Registered a 4.62 ERA, 4.95 FIP, 4.83 xFIP over the last two seasons. He racked up -0.5 fWAR, -0.1 rWAR, and -0.5 WARP over the same time frame.
Earned the nickname "Captain Chaos" for his propensity to turn save opportunities into breathtaking ordeals for his coaches and fans.

Yet despite the shaky recent track record, he has been a revelation for the Cubs stepping in as Chicago's closer after both Carlos Marmol and Kyuji Fujikawa faltered. His 30.8% strikeout rate would be a career high by more than 6% and it represents a 12% jump from last season. At the same time, his 10.3% walk rate is right in line with his career mark. As I've noted in my last few pieces, we are nearing the point in the season where we can really trust that those numbers have been real to this point. But that still leaves the big question, can he continue this performance?

Mining through some PITCHf/x data for Gregg, the first thing that stands out has been his pitch selection so far this year. Over the past two years he threw a cut fastball right around 25% of the time, but this year he has scrapped the pitch in favor of a sinker, which he is throwing over 30% of the time. He also is leaning more on a split fingered fastball with more vertical movement than in years past. You can see his pitch mix here:

The new and improved arsenal, plus the uptick in strikeouts make me cautiously optimistic that Gregg can continue his success. Maintaining the strikeout rate will really be the true test. Recently Blake Murphy looked at the factors that predict strikeout rate, and encouragingly Gregg's SwSt% is up significantly from last year. And if his sinker keeps sinking, he may be able to keep the ball in the ballpark better than previous seasons as well. Just a year ago, Fernando Rodney broke the single season ERA record, and now Kevin Gregg may be on his way to a career year at age-34. Man, I love baseball.

Andrew Ball is a writer for Beyond the Box Score, Fake Teams, and Fantasy Ninjas.

You can follow him on twitter @Andrew_Ball.

Finding a home: The search for the next MLB city (Part 1)

2013-05-17T15:22:55Z

A sad fact in life is that not every business enterprise can be successful. When times get tough enough, sports franchises are forced to change the way they work (sometimes with extreme measures like relocation). This series is going to explore just how feasible relocation currently is. The question being asked here is this: if any of the 30 MLB franchises decided to up and move, where could they go and what would be their likelihood of success?

To start, let me make one thing very clear: this post is not about expansion. Adding a new MLB team changes the dynamic of the discussion. Establishing a brand is different than relocating a brand to a new market. Here is the setup:

1) All North American markets are open for business. This includes several major Canadian and Mexican metro areas. (Note: For this series, the only non-U.S cities included are Mexico City, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.)

2) Markets that currently host a team are eligible to gain another team.

3) Host cities will be categorized by metro area.

4) Measures for all metro areas will include: population, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), GDP/Capita, volume of college graduates, age demographics, and unemployment rate.

5) For metro areas currently possessing MLB franchises, the following measures will also be used: attendance, percent capacity filled, and average wins per season.

Setting Up the Study

Before talking about the numbers, the framework of the study needs to be set up. Firstly, there were 46 metro areas included in the study: the 26 current MLB markets and 20 other metro areas. There were no minimum requriements that metro areas had to meet. Secondly, Gross Domestic Product is used to help define the economic state of the area. GDP is defined as an area's output of goods and services, and this measure is typically measured in one fiscal year. (Note: For this study, 2010 is used as it was what was available.) GDP allows you to see how money is being earned or is flowing through a given market and serves as a way to measure the affluence of a market. However, GDP is a set number and doesn't take into account how many people it took to produce the goods involved.

To measure the markets in another way, GDP per capita is used, which is an indicator of the money being earned by the individuals within the market. Within the markets studied in this research, GDP/Capita was heavily dependent on the volume of college graduates in the area, with an R of .65. This makes it important to know the volume of college graduates in an area. GDP numbers were borrowed from this graph from economist Joe Cortright. The ranges of college graduates were turned into ranks (15-24 is 1, 25-34 is 2, etc) and measured against other variables such as GDP. The last major items considered were unemployment rate and demographic information, both of which help to tell more about the current ability of a metro area's population to possess and spend disposable income on baseball.

Analyzing Current MLB Cities

When attendance and wins are added to the above variables,the current state of MLB metro areas can be analyzed. To help define what cities might need to host a team, here are the minimum and average numbers for each of the key variables:

Population: 5,057,409 Average; 1,555,908 minimum (Milwaukee)
GDP: $291,137,577 Average; $84,574,000 minimum (Milwaukee)
GDP/Capita: $57.57 average; $40.85 minimum (Tampa)
Unemployment Rate: 7.14 Average (rate); 9.9 maximum (Detroit)
College Graduate Score: 2.68 Average; 2 minimum (multi-way tie)
5 year Attendance Average: 29,757 Average (rate); 19,947 minimum (Miami)

This sets up a nice framework for what should be expected of MLB teams. When compared to non-MLB metro areas, current MLB metro areas have much higher populations, much higher GDP, larger GDP/Capita, a better average college graduate score, and a lower rate of unemployment. In short: MLB cities are already MLB cities for a reason.

Setting Up a Predictive Model

The next step here is using the information to set up a model to determine whether or not a city putting up a bid for a team will be able to maintain a strong enough business model to survive on its own. Attendance is a driving force behind any strong organization. Getting people in the park increases the opportunity to create revenue through concessions, merchandise sales, and other avenues in addition to ticket sales. Due to this, attendance is going to serve as the main focus for this predictive model. If fans don't come out to games, then teams are going to struggle to make money.

To find out what makes people show up, the main variables mentioned earlier were related to attendance.. For this study, five-year averages were used for attendance. The primary factor in whether or not fans would attend games is the average number of wins achieved per season. When the average number of wins over a five year span was related to the average attendance, a correlation of .68 was found. The evidence suggests that people pay to watch their teams win, which means the first step in determining success is figuring out how often a team will win.

The problem that this causes is the fact that this scenario calls for any potential team to move. This even includes franchises like the Yankees and the Red Sox. Therefore, when the results of the model are shown, they will be shown for a "bad" team (70 wins), an "average" team (81 wins), and a "good" team (90 wins). GDP, GDP/Capita, and population size were also tested. In the case of GDP/Capita, no evidence was found to suggest it has a true impact on attendance. The same was not true for GDP and population size, both of which correlated to attendance with an R north of .47. While the impact may be small, these are factors that can be used to help build a model.

Using regression analysis, a model can be developed to help predict expected attendance in a given market (assuming a certain number of wins). Here is the equation I formed for expected attendance:

.2277*(.00005*(GDP) + 25925) + .4559*(626.68*(Wins)- 20623) + .2211*(.0008*(Population) + 25494) + .095 (league average attendance)

That is a laundry list of numbers and variables, so here is how it breaks down: 22.77% of the variance in attendance is believed to be caused by GDP within a metro area, 45.59% is believed to be caused by win total, 22.11% is believed to be caused by population size, and the remaining 9.5% is being treated as the cause of the fact that people simply enjoy going to baseball games and will do so regardless of the market they are in. (Note: Other variables such as age demographics and unemployment rate were tested and found to have no noticeable relationship with attendance.) Below is a graph of the relationship between actual vs. predicted attendance:

Since the relationship between GDP and attendance was the weakest of the three, I wanted to see how the model would do if GDP was not used in the equation. When GDP is removed,the equation becomes:

4559*(626.68*(Wins)- 20623) + .2211*(.0008*(Population) + 25494) + .323 (league average attendance)

The results of this change are shown below:

When wins, population size, and a given assumption that people will attend games simply because they love baseball are used to to predict attendance, a relatively strong model can be formed (.72 R) that is stronger than simply using wins alone.

Conclusion

Current MLB cities are prime real estate for MLB franchises. They boast high populations, high GDP, high rates of GDP/Capita, high volumes of college graduates, and relatively low unemployment rates when compared to the other 20 metro areas included in this study. However, it appears that not all current MLB franchises are thriving in their cities, which means that the next MLB city is going to have to do more than score well in the given model for predicted attendance. In the next post, I will start breaking down metro areas and analyze whether or not they are viable options to become the next MLB host.

What Can We Learn From Expected Strikeout and Walk Rate Outliers?

2013-05-17T13:13:12Z

Introduction

Two weeks ago, Glen Perkins stated in a Fangraphs Q&A: "I don’t know if there’s a stat for an expected strikeout rate based on swings-and-misses and chases." Well obviously, I went into overdrive attempting to create such a stat. However, my quick work was in vain, as Beyond the Box Score's very own Blake Murphy did exactly that in his series on predicting walk and strikeout rates the day before the Perkins Q&A was posted.

Since Blake was ahead of us all on this front, I want to attack the idea from a slightly different perspective: which pitchers consistently outperform our expectations based on their peripherals and what can we learn from them?

Method

Just to keep things interesting, I ran my own multiple regression to find expected strikeout and unintentional walk and rates. I used the same minimum of 350 total batters faced to keep my method similar to Blake's.

Expected K/TBF = 0.02-Swing%(pfx)*0.71+Zone%(pfx)*0.37+F-Strike%*0.12+O-Swing%(pfx)*0.15+SwStr%*2.3

Adjusted R squared 0.75, Standard Error 0.02

Blake used only SwStr%, fastball velocity, and league average to create his equation, with basically the same results as mine. I missed fastball velocity when initially running the calculations and feel like his simpler and as accurate equation is a much better route.

Expected UIBB/TBF = 0.37-O-Swing%(pfx)*0.32-Zone%(pfx)*0.12-F-Strike%*0.23-Z-Swing(pfx)*0.07+SwStr%*0.41

Adjusted R squared 0.57, Standard Error 0.01

Blake did a similar shotgun technique to me with similar results. It's harder to predict walk rate based on peripheral stats than it is for strikeouts. I wonder if this is because there is not as much variability in walks as in strikeouts.

If we look at seasonal K/PA, the mean is 0.17, with a range from 0.05 to 0.30 and a standard deviation of 0.04. Compare that to UIBB/PA: Mean 0.07, range 0.02 to 0.17, standard deviation of only 0.02. Walk rates are much more bunched together than strikeout rates.

There are low strikeout pitchers and high strikeout pitchers, but you can't make it in the bigs if you walk a lot of people. The top two pitchers in UIBB/PA since 2007 are Dennis Sarfate (23 innings pitched after a 0.17 BB rate in 2008) and Kyle Drabek (71 innings pitched after a 0.15 BB rate in 2011).

Based on these equations, which pitchers consistently outperform their expected rates?

I took the expected rate and multiplied by the total batters faced that season, then subtracted this from the actual amount of strikeouts and walks. So in 2010, Cliff Lee had 185 Ks and 16 UIBBs, but was expected to have 159 and 25 based on his peripherals, for differences of 26 and negative 9, respectively.

I did this for each player season since 2007 and added up all the differences to find the top outliers.

Results

Strikeout Rate

Here are the leaders with at least 1,000 batters faced:

Player	Extra Ks Per PA
Vance Worley	0.055
Yovani Gallardo	0.048
Erik Bedard	0.039
Travis Wood	0.038
Brandon Morrow	0.037

What a weird group. Worley isn't exactly a strikeout pitcher, hovering just above league average. In the two full years he has appeared in the major leagues, he has a total of 226 strikeouts. However, based on his peripherals, we would have expected him to only rack up 163. Travis Wood is in a similar boat. Gallardo on the other hand, is definitely a strikeout pitcher, ranking 21st in the league since 2007. Bedard and Morrow also have a propensity to get swings and misses.

Of these top five, Wood is the only one who regularly throws a changeup. He's also the only one to heavily throw three different fastballs (four seam, sinker, cutter).

And pitchers with the most strikeouts missing per plate appearance based on their peripherals, minimum 1,000 batters faced:

Player	Extra Ks Per PA
Scott Olsen	-0.048
Tim Wakefield	-0.039
Jeff Karstens	-0.035
Paul Byrd	-0.034
Chris Capuano	-0.032

Okay, so a knuckle-baller broke the system. Beyond that, we have two lefties and two righties. What do Olsen, Karstens, Capuano, and Byrd (and Wakefield, for that matter) have in common, according to Brooks Baseball?

Player	vFA
Scott Olsen	89.06
Chris Capuano	88.45
Paul Byrd	86.6
Jeff Karstens	89.97

They're all soft-tossers. So I really should have included fastball velocity in my metric like Blake did. Interestingly enough, all four of them also rely heavily on fastball-slider-changeup repertoire, though I'm not sure how common that is.

This chart summarizes the findings:

Jonny Venters sticks out like a sore thumb on the bottom right, but a full 46% of the players with a strikeout rate above 0.20 and fewer strikeouts than expected per plate appearance are left handed pitchers. Compare this to 28% of all pitchers in this study who are left-handed and we have a clear trend. I wonder if some of this is due to lefties facing more right handed hitters. They are less likely to strike out the hitters that they see more often, leading to lower than expected strikeout rates. This isn't the case with every lefty though, as both Bedard and Wood are top-ranked at getting more strikeouts than we would expect.

Walk Rate

Player	Extra BBs Per PA
Hiroki Kuroda	-0.025
Jeff Francis	-0.021
Brett Anderson	-0.020
Livan Hernandez	-0.020
Jesse Litsch	-0.020

What do the top five pitchers who outperform their peripherals and walk fewer people than we expect have in common? Not throwing the four seam fastball a lot.

Kuroda, Francis and Hernandez are all sinkerballers, throwing their two seamer a majority of the time. Anderson does throw his four seamer more often than any other pitch, but only does so at a 41% clip. He throws a slider nearly as often at a 33% rate. Litsch throws his four seamer, two seamer and slider at comparable rates, but throws a cutter more often than either of those three.

Now the pitchers who walk more than we expect:

Player	Extra BBs Per PA
Chris Young	0.028
Daisuke Matsuzaka	0.026
Jonathan Sanchez	0.024
Micah Owings	0.020
Oliver Perez	0.020

Sanchez and Perez are the only two of these five to appear in the major leagues this season. It's not going very well for Sanchez, who has a 9.68 FIP in 13 innings, although his walk rate has fallen to a more manageable 0.11. Perez is a little better off with a 3.67 FIP.

Pitchers that walk a bunch of people tend to walk even more hitters than we would expect. It's a linear trend and is much more clear for walks than for strikeouts. Perhaps this is why walk rate is a better next season predictor than anything else. I had a classmate in college that would get into failure spirals. Once one thing went wrong, he would get angry, leading to another thing going wrong, leading to more anger. It was rather funny to watch from a distance, providing he did no real harm to himself or others. I feel like that's what happens with pitchers like Young and Matsuzaka. Once the walks start, they just keep coming and coming until eventually they've lost control of the game.

Summary

So what have we learned? Based on the preceding small sample sizes, this may be worth more digging into pitch usage data.

Does not having a changeup help pitchers get more strikeouts than expected? Do pitchers with fewer than expected walks rely less on their four seam fastball?

And a few things are certain: Lower fastball velocity means fewer strikeouts, left handed pitchers are more likely to strike out fewer batters than we expect, and finally high-walk pitchers just keep right on walking people.

As usual, thanks to Fangraphs for the data.

SaberSphere 5/17: Velocity, Grilli, and Mariachi Bands

2013-05-17T12:58:45Z

In today's links we find out when velocity changes during a start, we celebrate the success of Jason Grilli and Scott Kazmir, and we have the good fortune to hear Jim Leyland's thoughts on shifting. Let's dive in!

Previously on Beyond the Box Score

How and when does velocity change during a start? by Jon Roegele │ Beyond the Box Score
We have found that fastball velocity tends to fluctuate from start to start, but how does it change during the same game? Jon does his best to give us an answer, providing a study on differences in velocity as it relates to pitch count while accounting for the base-out state.
Successfully transitioning from the bullpen to the rotation by Alex Kienholz │ Beyond the Box Score
Many more teams are using the bullpen as a way to break in young pitchers. How do those pitchers fare in the starting rotation after they've already spent a season or more in the pen?

Around the Sabersphere

Climbing, with Jason Grilli by Jeff Sullivan │ Fangraphs
In case you've missed it, Pirates' closer Jason Grilli has gone from Major League journeyman to quite possibly the best reliever in the game. Jeff takes us on the long, crazy journey that it's been. My favorite statistic from the piece? If you add up his current ERA-, FIP-, and xFIP-, you get Tim Lincecum's career ERA-.
How Scott Kazmir got his groove back by Kyle Boddy │ The Hardball Times
Speaking of pitchers that have come out of nowhere, Scott Kazmir has reasserted himself as a Major League caliber starting pitcher. This is just one year after he was toiling on the mound for the Sugar Land Skeeters of the unaffiliated Atlantic League. Kyle asks the million dollar question, how?
Eyewitness Accounts May 16 by the BP Prospect Staff │ Baseball Prospectus
In the news I'm most excited about, Baseball Prospectus has announced they will be altering the way they cover the Minor Leagues. Moving forward, Jason Parks and his team will be giving first hand accounts of players, a really exciting development showing again that BP does a great job of blending traditional scouting with advanced analysis. The first notebook features accounts of some of the best pitching prospects in the game.
The Stats Go Marching In: Catcher Framing before PITCHf/x by Max Marchi │ Baseball Prospectus
BP has been among the leaders in new analysis of catcher performance and specifically pitch framing. Much of that analysis has been made possible because of the developments in PITCHf/x. That data has given us 6 seasons of information to work with, but that's not enough for Max. No, he decided to use Retrosheet pitch sequencing to look at the last twenty seasons.
Point/Counterpoint on Rodgers' Extension by Brian Burke │ Advanced NFL Stats
Right, so not a baseball article, but still a really fascinating (self) argument on the merits of Aaron Rodgers new contract. I'm still not certain which side I feel is more correct.

Around SB Nation

The Rotation: Making a More Compelling MLB Draft by SB Nation MLB Staff │ SB Nation MLB
While I'm sure many of us, myself included, already find the Rule 4 draft exciting, it just doesn't interest the majority of baseball fans. So how do we fix that? Eight SB Nation writers weigh in with their changes for the draft.
Jim Leyland holds court on the shift by Grant Brisbee │ Baseball Nation
Does Jim Leyland have an opinion on shifting? You bet he does.
There will be a Mariachi Band at Petco Park. ¡ SI SE PUEDE! by Dex │ Gaslamp Ball
This Saturday there will be six Mariacha Bands roaming around San Diego's ballpark. No special occasion, just an attempt by the Padres to bring something new and different to fans. I love it as much as I love the video in the article.

Outside the Sabersphere

Although it's probably old news at this point, after 8 long years and tons of fantastic episodes, WE FINALLY HAVE SEEN THE MOTHER. I'm really looking forward to season 9.

BtBS Podcast #58: They Suck

2013-05-17T12:58:07Z

Now coming at you Tuesdays and Friday, Bryan Grosnick and Blake Murphy will aim to bring you the best in baseball with a saber-lean, working in a third man in the booth or special guest when we can. We're starting to find a flow and some regular features but we're hungry for comments and suggestions, so get at us!

Today's edition runs about 45min (15.9 MB for download). Here's a really thin outline of what we talk about:

*Why do the Angels suck?
*Why are the Indians good?
*Carlos Gomez' hot hot start.
*Shameless plugs!
*Weird stat of the day!
*Much, MUCH more.