Been at it again. I’ve been trying to come up with a way to assess how pitchers are doing during a game, as far as staying ahead of hitters. 1st pitch strikes are an indication, but they’re only a part of the picture.
FoR several months I’ve been able to look at this during games by counting the number of pitches thrown in each count, but its difficult to analyze things like that between pitches or even between innings. There are 12 different pitch counts a pitch can be thrown on, and I’ve counted how many are thrown on each. 0-0,0-1,0-2,1-0,1-1,1-2,2-0,2-1,2-2,3-0,3-1,3-2. I don’t bother counting the 0-0 count because there’s one for every batter. In order to reduce all the numbers to something manageable, I’ve broken them down into pitches thrown ahead in the count.
http://www.infosports.com/scor...images/pitsncnts.pdf
The 1st page of the attachment is the last game our incoming Fr played. The next page is how those pitchers look for the entire season, and the next is their opponents. The 4th page is our V for 2013, and their opponents are on the 5th, and the next 2 pages is the V from 2007-2013 combined, with the final 2 all of their opponents.
Its pretty easy to see in that last game our pitchers had some mighty big problems. Looking at how they’ve done so far this summer on average, 25.2% pitches thrown ahead in the count to only 18.2% for that game makes it pretty easy to see that things weren’t good for that game. Then to compare their 25.2% to last year’s V at 34.9% and to the 36.1% average for the 7 seasons, its pretty easy to pinpoint what has to be improved.
But the big thing I’m trying to see, is if there’s some kind of limit that can be looked for. Obviously when a pitcher is throwing at a higher percentage than the team average, he’s likely doing fine and can be pretty much left alone. But I’m wondering if there’s some trigger that’s say 10% below the team average where it might be a good idea to get someone up in the bullpen. 
As always, all thoughts are appreciated.