Dunn's Future

[Dick Allen]

No, I guess I don't consider O Swing% an advanced metric. It's just someone counting the number of times a guy swings at pitches out of the zone. Has that not been something obviously relevant for like 70+ years?

That's pretty funny. What was Mickey Mantle's career O Swing %?

[southsider2k5]

Yeah, no trolling going on in this thread.

[Eminor3rd]

No. Without modern pitch tracking it's literally impossible to come up with that metric because prior to that there was no record of whether or not a pitch was out of the zone if a guy swung.

 

 

That's pretty funny. What was Mickey Mantle's career O Swing %?

 

Yeah, I know it's not something we had so much data on until recently, but what is advanced about it? We got new technology, not some kind of awakening. WHOA IT'S ALMOST LIKE WHEN HE SWINGS AT BAD PITCHES, WORSE THINGS HAPPEN!

[Marty34]

The Saber guys told us Carlos Gomez sucked. They told us Dayan Viciedo was pretty much a lost cause. They told us Alexei Ramirez wasn't going to be worth his contract moving forward.

 

The fact is like Hickory posted earlier, a 7.0 WAR player isn't necessarily better than a 6.7 WAR player. Yet, if someone is considered anit-saber, that fact will always be used as proof that the person who thinks the 6.7 player is better is just wrong.

 

There are going to be misses both good and bad with whatever you use.

 

As the saying goes, everything in moderation. If you like a player there will always be a stat to hang your hat on.

 

[witesoxfan]

As the saying goes, everything in moderation. If you like a player there will always be a stat to hang your hat on.

 

You come up with those toolsy outfielders yet?

[Marty34]

You come up with those toolsy outfielders yet?

 

No.

[witesoxfan]

No.

 

At least you're honest.

[Marty34]

Well, people misuse advanced metrics just like people misuse traditional stats. The biggest misuse of advanced metrics is accepting them as an absolute, as in saying somebody with a 7.0 WAR in a season was clearly better than somebody with a 6.7 WAR. While the advanced metrics are much better, they still don't have a perfectly linear correlation to wins (or even runs). They are still approximations of value, albeit much better ones. As for projection systems, they all are based on normal distributions which expect 2/3 of the results to vary by as much as a full standard deviation. If you get way beyond a full standard deviation, then yes, it is justified to suggest luck might be involved. It also helps to look at what is driving the variance. An extremely high BABIP is more likely signaling luck (Flowers), whereas an increased walk rate is more likely to suggest genuine improvement from the player (Viciedo).

 

Also, I don't think anybody is putting a lot of stock in advanced metrics when it comes to scouting. You are scouting college and high school players and there is no accepted way to translate their stats the way we can translate major league, and to a lesser extent minor league stats. Now, scouts who have a foundation in advanced metrics will be looking for different things when scouting than "traditional" scouts, and as such will likely have a higher success rate, but there is still a very large error rate in scouting. Regardless of your evaluation method you are never going to hit on every draft pick.

 

The Sabre man just gave you proof that player A is better than player B by virtue of the .3 difference in WAR, there's no denying 7 > 6.7. It's just as laughable as TWTW though.

[witesoxfan]

The Sabre man just gave you proof that player A is better than player B by virtue of the .3 difference in WAR, there's no denying 7 > 6.7. It's just as laughable as TWTW though.

 

Only you are saying that and can't seem to understand it.

 

You have Miguel Cabrera and Carlos Gomez who both put up a WAR of 7.6 last year. They were vastly different players. Now, if you value or feel defense helps your team more, then you would prefer Gomez. If your defense is fine but you need a hitter in the lineup, you'd prefer Cabrera.

 

It's all about the added value of the marginal utility and what you need more.

 

 

[The Ultimate Champion]

I think it's cool that stats people actually argue context now. Stats are getting better and the pendulum is starting to swing IMO, instead of stats making the game dumber they're starting to make it smarter. Fans are still dumb though (except me). It used to be like "f*** you his OPS is better" and that was the argument from the statheads.

[Balta1701]

The Sabre man just gave you proof that player A is better than player B by virtue of the .3 difference in WAR, there's no denying 7 > 6.7. It's just as laughable as TWTW though.

Yes there is if you have a basic understanding of statistics and "margins of error".

[The Ultimate Champion]

Yeah, I know it's not something we had so much data on until recently, but what is advanced about it? We got new technology, not some kind of awakening. WHOA IT'S ALMOST LIKE WHEN HE SWINGS AT BAD PITCHES, WORSE THINGS HAPPEN!

There's a difference between swinging through a hard-biting breaking ball when you are in protect mode vs. chasing something you can't hit 0-0 or ahead in the count. In fact swinging at a good pitch out of the zone 0-2 is better than swinging at a pitcher's pitch inside the zone up 2-0 with another strike left. I'm not sure how you're figuring that stuff but I'm hoping you stat pickles are accounting for that in your evaluations.

[witesoxfan]

There's a difference between swinging through a hard-biting breaking ball when you are in protect mode vs. chasing something you can't hit 0-0 or ahead in the count. In fact swinging at a good pitch out of the zone 0-2 is better than swinging at a pitcher's pitch inside the zone up 2-0 with another strike left. I'm not sure how you're figuring that stuff but I'm hoping you stat pickles are accounting for that in your evaluations.

 

Assuming 3.5 P/PA (Viciedo is at 3.69 right now) and 600 plate appearances, that's 2100 pitches over the course of a season that a hitter will see. There will be some times where a player will swing and protect at a pitch technically out of the zone, and that's not a bad thing, and there will be times he'll let a pitch on the black go even though it's in the zone. That's all fine. But, over the 2100 pitch sample size, those will all even out. That's why these are indicative of trends and why you can say "swinging out of the zone is a bad thing."

[Eminor3rd]

The Sabre man just gave you proof that player A is better than player B by virtue of the .3 difference in WAR, there's no denying 7 > 6.7. It's just as laughable as TWTW though.

 

7.0 WAR is better than 6.7 WAR in the same way that 150 RBI is better than 145 RBI. There's no question the guy that hit 150 did more, but is he definitely a better hitter because of it? The reality is that you'd consider them essentially in the same class as "elite RBI men." This is exactly how you'd categorize the 6.7 and 7.0 WAR guys, as "roughly 7 win players."

Edited May 23, 2014 by Eminor3rd

[The Ultimate Champion]

Assuming 3.5 P/PA (Viciedo is at 3.69 right now) and 600 plate appearances, that's 2100 pitches over the course of a season that a hitter will see. There will be some times where a player will swing and protect at a pitch technically out of the zone, and that's not a bad thing, and there will be times he'll let a pitch on the black go even though it's in the zone. That's all fine. But, over the 2100 pitch sample size, those will all even out. That's why these are indicative of trends and why you can say "swinging out of the zone is a bad thing."

I see that but with all the machines tracking things now I think some kind of hot zone type stat would work better to account for context. IE Michael Young IIRC used to always murder Buehrle in Texas on the outside fastball, he'd reach out and hit the ball well outside of the zone and lace it down the line just because Mark wasn't getting in on him enough. The pitch sequence and batter strengths in general combine with the umpires judgement on the day (tight, wide, idiotic, etc.) to create an intelligent strikezone that doesn't necessarily match the zone on paper.

 

IE that low and away change in the zone, just let it go by if you're not ready for it because 1 K isn't as bad as a DP. But that high fastball when you're geared up for it in a hitter's count with men on? Alexei can hit that thing out just fine, has done so many times over.

[The Ultimate Champion]

BTW what I'm saying above is basically what Steverson seems to be preaching, don't help the pitcher out but get your pitch and be aggressive when you get it. Great approach for really anyone but especially flawed hitters.

[Eminor3rd]

I see that but with all the machines tracking things now I think some kind of hot zone type stat would work better to account for context. IE Michael Young IIRC used to always murder Buehrle in Texas on the outside fastball, he'd reach out and hit the ball well outside of the zone and lace it down the line just because Mark wasn't getting in on him enough. The pitch sequence and batter strengths in general combine with the umpires judgement on the day (tight, wide, idiotic, etc.) to create an intelligent strikezone that doesn't necessarily match the zone on paper.

 

IE that low and away change in the zone, just let it go by if you're not ready for it because 1 K isn't as bad as a DP. But that high fastball when you're geared up for it in a hitter's count with men on? Alexei can hit that thing out just fine, has done so many times over.

 

I do worry about this stuff a little bit, especially with guys like Abreu, whose wheelhouse appears to be close to the outside edge of the academic zone. When I see a 40% O-Swing, how much of that is him biting on a low and in slider and how much is him just drilling a ball just off the black which is really like 2 inches away from his ideal location?

 

Abreu is obviously an exception to the general population, but still. I like measurements that don't have exceptions, lol.

[witesoxfan]

I see that but with all the machines tracking things now I think some kind of hot zone type stat would work better to account for context. IE Michael Young IIRC used to always murder Buehrle in Texas on the outside fastball, he'd reach out and hit the ball well outside of the zone and lace it down the line just because Mark wasn't getting in on him enough. The pitch sequence and batter strengths in general combine with the umpires judgement on the day (tight, wide, idiotic, etc.) to create an intelligent strikezone that doesn't necessarily match the zone on paper.

 

IE that low and away change in the zone, just let it go by if you're not ready for it because 1 K isn't as bad as a DP. But that high fastball when you're geared up for it in a hitter's count with men on? Alexei can hit that thing out just fine, has done so many times over.

 

You can see heat zones and where guys hit the ball, FGs and Brooks baseball are both good for that (as well as any other number of sites). But why would you want to subjectively change the strikezone when [theoretically] the strike zone does not change? In a vacuum, swinging at pitches in the zone is good, swinging at pitches outside of the zone is bad. There are always going to be examples of times it works out the opposite way - just like you prefer hitting line drives over anything else, but there will be times that ground balls end up as triples and line drives end up as outs. Over time, those trends to even out.

 

From a pitcher's point of view, they would prefer those heat zones. It would be interesting to see some of it - maybe a guy should be looking at balls here and maybe he should figure out a way to handle breaking balls on the outer edge a bit better - and I do believe they have some of it, but from the viewpoint of swinging at pitches in the zone or not (or not swinging at pitches in the zone or not), those just don't make as much sense.

[witesoxfan]

BTW what I'm saying above is basically what Steverson seems to be preaching, don't help the pitcher out but get your pitch and be aggressive when you get it. Great approach for really anyone but especially flawed hitters.

 

Go up to the plate with a plan. This guy likes to work the outer half of the plate with breaking balls and bust you in with fastballs, or he throws first pitch fastball 86% of the time, or whatever. Know what to expect and what to look for, kill it when you get it and don't even swing when you don't.

[The Ultimate Champion]

You can see heat zones and where guys hit the ball, FGs and Brooks baseball are both good for that (as well as any other number of sites). But why would you want to subjectively change the strikezone when [theoretically] the strike zone does not change? In a vacuum, swinging at pitches in the zone is good, swinging at pitches outside of the zone is bad. There are always going to be examples of times it works out the opposite way - just like you prefer hitting line drives over anything else, but there will be times that ground balls end up as triples and line drives end up as outs. Over time, those trends to even out.

 

From a pitcher's point of view, they would prefer those heat zones. It would be interesting to see some of it - maybe a guy should be looking at balls here and maybe he should figure out a way to handle breaking balls on the outer edge a bit better - and I do believe they have some of it, but from the viewpoint of swinging at pitches in the zone or not (or not swinging at pitches in the zone or not), those just don't make as much sense.

The strikezone really exists in the mind of the hitter more than it does on paper. That's the whole reason pitchers can get a guy fishing going further and further away, or get them to climb the ladder, etc. The Michael Young example is one where the pitch that establishes the inside part of the strikezone is probably something like 2" over the inside corner of the plate, which allows the batter to extend his coverage area to an area off the plate. The whole reason the on-paper zone can work is if the whole thing is being used, but a hitter who doesn't have to look in can look away, and a hitter who doesn't have to look away can pull his hands in and pull something out of the park that otherwise may have clipped him in the other extreme. The zone is really relative to the pitch sequence and location, not just to some imaginary box somewhere. It's why Hawk is always talking about pitching in, because when the Sox don't do it they get hurt.

 

Another example is the gopher ball Sale served up to Delmon Young vs. the Tigers in one of those many key Sox-Tigers games in 2012. I think that was a slam? There were runners on, I remember that. Sale went low, lower, lowest but at the same speed and break, turning an unhittable pitch into one that went over the fence. You can extend a hitters strikezone or restrict it by confusing him or being unpredictable.

 

Anyway the point is that the zone is relative to the pitch and sequence as well as hitter strength. It's like, the high fastball Alexei isn't going to be able to hit over the fence all the time, just sometimes when the pitcher makes him ready for it. But Alexei at least can do that sometimes, Josh Fields never could, so you don't ever want to see someone like that doing the same thing. You just have to apply context, and again, K'ing through a borderline pitch in protect mode isn't necessarily "giving up an AB" if the pitcher is just on, but "working" a 2-0, 3-0, 3-1 count and swinging at something you can't hit anyway, outside the zone or not, is kind of "giving up an AB" because if you're out then you've gotten yourself out without making the pitcher do it. The total set of numbers would be useful I'm sure and the larger the samples the better but they still need to be separated by context. And I think the most important result that you would want to measure or monitor would be how often a hitter takes himself out of an AB, not how often he goes out of the zone.

[The Ultimate Champion]

Go up to the plate with a plan. This guy likes to work the outer half of the plate with breaking balls and bust you in with fastballs, or he throws first pitch fastball 86% of the time, or whatever. Know what to expect and what to look for, kill it when you get it and don't even swing when you don't.

Right. But be ready to adjust as well. The whole reason you love to see hitters go up the middle and the other way is that, regardless of the result (out, hit, whatever) you feel confident in that batters ability or at least readiness to adjust to multiple pitch speeds, types, and locations.

[witesoxfan]

The strikezone really exists in the mind of the hitter more than it does on paper.

 

I just want to start by saying that I disagree with this premise entirely. There is a clearly defined strikezone by the MLB rules:

 

"The Strike Zone is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the [bottom] of the knees. The Strike Zone shall be determined from the batter's stance as the batter is prepared to swing at a pitched ball."

 

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/official_info/umpires/strike_zone.jsp

 

Beyond that, the strikezone is in the mind of the umpire more than it is the hitter. The hitter just needs to generally know which balls are strikes and which are not.

 

That's the whole reason pitchers can get a guy fishing going further and further away, or get them to climb the ladder, etc. The Michael Young example is one where the pitch that establishes the inside part of the strikezone is probably something like 2" over the inside corner of the plate, which allows the batter to extend his coverage area to an area off the plate. The whole reason the on-paper zone can work is if the whole thing is being used, but a hitter who doesn't have to look in can look away, and a hitter who doesn't have to look away can pull his hands in and pull something out of the park that otherwise may have clipped him in the other extreme. The zone is really relative to the pitch sequence and location, not just to some imaginary box somewhere. It's why Hawk is always talking about pitching in, because when the Sox don't do it they get hurt.

 

Another example is the gopher ball Sale served up to Delmon Young vs. the Tigers in one of those many key Sox-Tigers games in 2012. I think that was a slam? There were runners on, I remember that. Sale went low, lower, lowest but at the same speed and break, turning an unhittable pitch into one that went over the fence. You can extend a hitters strikezone or restrict it by confusing him or being unpredictable.

 

Anyway the point is that the zone is relative to the pitch and sequence as well as hitter strength. It's like, the high fastball Alexei isn't going to be able to hit over the fence all the time, just sometimes when the pitcher makes him ready for it. But Alexei at least can do that sometimes, Josh Fields never could, so you don't ever want to see someone like that doing the same thing. You just have to apply context, and again, K'ing through a borderline pitch in protect mode isn't necessarily "giving up an AB" if the pitcher is just on, but "working" a 2-0, 3-0, 3-1 count and swinging at something you can't hit anyway, outside the zone or not, is kind of "giving up an AB" because if you're out then you've gotten yourself out without making the pitcher do it. The total set of numbers would be useful I'm sure and the larger the samples the better but they still need to be separated by context. And I think the most important result that you would want to measure or monitor would be how often a hitter takes himself out of an AB, not how often he goes out of the zone.

 

All of this is talking about pitching theory. That's not what we were discussing earlier. It's an interesting discussion, but not on the topic. O-Swing% and Z-Swing% really don't have a lot to do with this.

 

I will say that there are all kinds of ways you can get hitters out. You can change speeds (fastball-curve/change), you can make pitches look similar but have break away (fastball-splitter/slider/change), you can change eye levels (working up and down, constantly shifting), you can change locations (in and out), you can throw unhittable pitches (KNUCKLEBALL), or whatever else. What works for one guy won't work for another. The most important part of that piece, for any pitcher, is fastball command.

[The Ultimate Champion]

Ok as simply as possible.

 

You're talking about measuring an event (outside zone swings) and recording it as generally a bad thing/undesirable result, completely ignoring that it in some situations it may be a very, very good thing and doing so selectively may be an indication of excellent strikezone judgement and plate discipline in a hitter.

 

I think that's dumb.

[bmags]

Last page and a half has been very entertaining. Kudos to everyone, I've learned a lot.

[The Ultimate Champion]

BTW I'm not saying the numbers aren't going to be useful but they probably shouldn't be used to try to get a complete picture of a hitter. At least not yet until the process becomes more sophisticated.