2-strike survival ratio"

Good question...looking forward to the answer.

You often hear, "this guy is a great 2-strike hitter." Seems like a nice compliment, but I've seen guys who are called that but are too often 2 strikes in the hole. Are they also the same players who strike out a lot?

Interesting.

That sounds brilliant, Rob. Please keep us posted if you find an answer.

Also, I'd really like to see if people are right when they say, "so and so is a great two strike hitter."

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Found this on line....

http://www.insidethebook.com/e...ts/hitting_by_count/

OR....


Using Tom Tippett data, here is the wOBA, BABIP, and the big three, by count, excluding IBB:



Count wOBA BABIP AVG OBP SPC PA
At 3-0 0.700 0.343 0.401 0.946 0.789 3,113

At 3-1 0.564 0.307 0.347 0.681 0.604 9,013

At 2-0 0.405 0.299 0.343 0.343 0.622 4,882

At 3-2 0.403 0.303 0.230 0.470 0.380 22,183

At 1-0 0.388 0.310 0.342 0.342 0.574 13,604

At 0-0 0.381 0.311 0.341 0.341 0.555 21,312

At 2-1 0.375 0.301 0.332 0.332 0.551 10,118

At 1-1 0.362 0.301 0.328 0.328 0.522 15,772

At 0-1 0.346 0.299 0.321 0.321 0.487 16,002

At 2-2 0.214 0.288 0.195 0.195 0.308 22,761

At 1-2 0.188 0.282 0.177 0.177 0.260 23,762

At 0-2 0.177 0.282 0.167 0.167 0.243 13,198

As you can see, a huge difference in BABIP on 3-0 counts and 2-strike counts.


More importantly in most cases however are “pass-through” counts, which I’ll present here:


Through Count wOBA BABIP AVG OBP SPC PA

Through 3-0 0.570 0.313 0.296 0.725 0.496 8,131

Through 3-1 0.490 0.303 0.281 0.587 0.475 16,168

Through 2-0 0.443 0.301 0.290 0.494 0.493 25,514

Through 3-2 0.403 0.303 0.230 0.470 0.380 22,183

Through 2-1 0.372 0.296 0.262 0.397 0.433 37,414

Through 1-0 0.371 0.300 0.280 0.382 0.459 72,841

Through 0-0 0.332 0.299 0.268 0.328 0.430 175,638

Through 1-1 0.314 0.295 0.248 0.315 0.396 68,748

Through 2-2 0.290 0.294 0.207 0.304 0.333 37,782

Through 0-1 0.283 0.294 0.239 0.276 0.372 81,511

Through 1-2 0.237 0.289 0.191 0.237 0.294 45,390

Through 0-2 0.212 0.287 0.183 0.207 0.275 30,514


If we look at the “at 2-0”, we see the wOBA is .405, which is excellent. But, the “through 2-0” is .443, and this is Pujols-like. The “through” counts also capture what happens if the PA doesn’t end at the 2-0 count, meaning that you are still going to be in a hitter’s count.

To show you how incredible Pujols and the old-Bonds are as hitters, if you give an average hitter an automatic 2-0 count, that’s the same thing as starting Pujols at an 0-0 count. That’s how much of an advantage they have.


44
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That stuff is very interesting. It confirms what intuition would tell us about hitting success on each count.

It doesn't quite get at what I am looking for, though, which is comparisons across hitters for the survival ratio.

Put simply, are there really "good two strike hitters?" Or is that just an illusion, and success rate with two strikes is really quite consistent.

I think first you have to determine what success is for a 0-2 hitter. Using those numbers above for just a single player if he's hitting .220 then he's a "good two strike hitter" because he's above the norm but compared to most of the other counts he's not a good hitter.

The teaching point here is to not find yourself in 0 - 2 counts much because at .220 you're still not very good overall.

This doesn't answer your question Rob but I think it is a factor to consider when you look at this stat.

Rob,

If you go to ESPN.com and look under players, you can go to a players individual splits like I did with Albert Puljos and it shows every possible count both at the count and through the count with batting averages, slugging %, etc. Big Albert has a .211 average this year with an 0-2 count so far. I think I remember one year at least Tony Gwynn still hit over .300 with 0-2 counts. I think this is fairly rare once the player has quite a few AB's. Anyway, this might be something you might be interested in for individual players.

It's not just the 0-2 count at issue here, but any 2 strike count. Three Bagger - yes I did find that the information is available for every batter, every count. In fact, I found that Wade Boggs is .258 lifetime with 0-2 counts! That is pretty amazing.

So taking the stats from every 2 strike count and finding their averages, we can get a player's success at 2 strike counts.

But I don't want to do the research! I was hoping someone had already analyzed this!

Rob,

I recommend that you read the article by Bickel and Stotz (the Stanford coach) Batting Average by Count and Pitch Type--Fact and Fallacy

The article explains why calculating a "batting average" on a specific count leads to incorrect conclusions. Specifically, they point out that the low average produced by hitters facing a 2 strike count is really the result of the way batting averages are calculated. It is not intrinsic to the batter's performance.

They propose instead a statistic called Hits per Strike. For any count, they look at all the pitches thrown for a strike, and find the fraction of hits. Interestingly, the fraction is higher for 2 strike counts, although I suspect the fact that foul balls aren't strikes with a 2 strike count plays into the result.

Here's a quote from the article: "How about the chance of getting a hit if batters are thrown a strike when they are ahead, behind, or even in the count? Batters' HPS was 0.113, 0.114, and 0.094. Batters are just as likely to get a hit off a pitch thrown for a strike when they are ahead in the count as when they are behind!"

None of this directly answers the question of whether individual batters vary in their ability to perform with 2 strikes. However, the fact that HPS, as averaged over all hitters, was the same for ahead and behind in the count tends to imply that an individual produces the same HPS in every count. In other words, if you want to know who is a good hitter on 2 strike counts, simply identify the good overall hitters.

observer44, the "through counts" tend to get around some of the objections in the above article. I will point out that while BABIP looks very good on a 3-0 count, hitters actually perform very poorly on 3-0: For the most part, they follow instructions and take strike 1.