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Reply to "Pitches per Run Vs ERA"

Just for everyone's clarity, stats has me on ignore because disagreeing with him and showing my math is apparently a personal attack in his book.
 
Originally Posted by cabbagedad:

If our P’s can keep the ball down, mix pitches, work ahead and generally stay away from the hitters’ strengths, we get some K’s, lots of weakly hit balls in play and a high rate of success. 

I haven't tried running the numbers on HS or pre-HS stats, but at the MLB and pro-level, pitchers don't really have that much control over the results of what happens on BIP (non-HR, fairly hit balls).

 

Pitchers do have GB/FB tendencies that reflect a level of skill/talent, and GB pitchers do tend to do better for the same rates of BIP because GB are less damaging than line drives or fly balls (the latter because that's where most HR come from).  The reason K pitchers do better on opponent average is that striking guys out reduces BIP and BABIP is fairly constant league-wide, so fewer BIP leads to a lower opponent batting line with all else equal (since the Ks will almost always be outs).

 

Stats probably has sufficient HS data to test whether this BIP/K relationship is similar at the HS level, though he probably won't be that interested in checking it since, to him, nothing at the MLB level is applicable at the HS level.  If I had to guess, I'd expect that the relationship is largely similar, but that the HS BABIP will be higher due to poorer defenses in general getting to fewer balls. There might also be (maybe even probably should be) pitchers whose stuff is enough better than the average hitter that they actually have consistently lower BABIP allowed than the league-wide averages.  I mean it's probably possible for an 18 year old version of Derek Lowe or Jamie Moyer to actually control results on contact in ways that they can't vs a team full of pros, though it certainly could also be the case that that would just manifest itself as a bunch more strike outs for those guys, and normal BABIP rates for the guys who actually make contact.

Last edited by jacjacatk
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