What makes up pitching "stress"?

I'm not sure I understand the difficulty in understanding the concept, to be honest. A stressful inning for a pitcher consists of an inning in which there are baserunners and/or a high pitch count. Baserunners cause a pitcher to adjust their timing and, sometimes, their method of attack and a high pitch count with a lack of rest causes fatigue.

 

Originally Posted by J H:

I'm not sure I understand the difficulty in understanding the concept, to be honest. A stressful inning for a pitcher consists of an inning in which there are baserunners and/or a high pitch count. Baserunners cause a pitcher to adjust their timing and, sometimes, their method of attack and a high pitch count with a lack of rest causes fatigue.

 

I never said I had difficulty understanding the concept, and I’m pretty sure I understand at least the major factors that increase the stress. I said I’ve been toying around with it from a statistic perspective, by which I mean quantifying it with real numbers.

 

You mentioned base runners. I’ve taken that into consideration already, and also taken into consideration pitch counts, i.e. the number of pitches thrown. I’ve taken several other things into account as well, and given them all values so a number can be come up with as a measure of that stress. Any trouble I’m having personally is wondering if there are any significant factors I’ve missed and whether or not the values I’ve assigned to them are valid. I’m hoping people will volunteer their thoughts in order that I can make what I’m doing as valid as I can.

Originally Posted by TPM:

You seem to be a fairly intelligent person who should be able to figure this out for himself.  You argue every point we usually make when asked for opinions so I  wonder why you would ask.   I expect an argument on this as well.

 

I’m sorry you feel no one should ever be challenged and see it as arguing for no reason. But its OK, I’ve been doing the same thing for almost 70 years now, and I haven’t killed anyone yet. We’ll see if you get an ARGUMENT or are simply questioned. If you see them both as the same thing, there’s nothing I can do about it.

 

Here ya go, in no specific order or level.

 

My back hurts and my arm feels like it's ready to fall off. The weather is lousy, the umpire has a very tight zone today and my ss can't field one ball hit to him.  Most of my  teammates were out partying all night and hung over.  The team's bats went dead so it's my job to hold things together for 5-7 innings .And the wind is blowing out to CF 19mph.

 

Oh yeah, I got to the field late today, my kid is sick and mom's at work and I had to wait for sitter. She called and said the doc thinks she should bring him to the hospital due to high fever.

 

Hope that this helps!

 

I guess I’m just a fool because the only thing you mentioned that even remotely crossed my mind, was the last half of the 1^st one. But before you get all huffy and said “I TOLD YA SO”, I’ll go ahead and list the things I thought were significant things that not only added to the “stress” or “pressure” on the pitcher, but that were pretty much the same for any pitcher. Anyone who wants to “argue” or just “disagree” is welcome to do so, but I ask that you at least come up with an alternative.

 

The 1^st thing I looked at was the count on the umpire’s counter. I’ve never heard of anyone who advocates pitching the same way, using the same pitches, no matter what the count. IOW, the count very often dictates how much stress there is on the pitcher. When he’s ahead 0-2 there’s the least amount of stress, and when he’s behind 3-0 there’s the maximum amount.

 

Next I factored in outs, with the idea being that there’s less stress on the pitcher the less outs he needs to end the inning. The final factor of the 1^st part of it was runners. Least stress when there are no runners, most stress when the bases are loaded. This is a list of the 3 factors with the values I assigned. http://www.infosports.com/scor...er/images/values.pdf

 

After a pitch, the computer looks up the situation and gets the points for it. That way there are points for every pitch.

 

Once I had those working, I factored in the inning. The earlier the inning, the less pressure. Then came the score. Again, pretty simple logic. The further behind a pitcher’s team is, the more stress there is not to allow it to get any worse. I chose not to add or reduce pressure for more than 10 runs because it didn’t make sense to me. This is a list of the those 2 factors with the values I assigned. http://www.infosports.com/scor...ages/valuesinnsc.pdf

 

The point total is computed the same way. For every pitch the computer looks up the point value in each table for the situation and the points are added together to get a value for the stress on the pitch.

 

The last thing I’ve taken into account was the number of pitches. I considered total pitch counts for the game, but dropped that line of thinking because the total pitches can be arrived at so many different ways. In the end I fell back on what’s been considered NORMAL for as long as I can remember. 15 pitches per inning seems to be standard, so that’s what I decided in the end. The 1^st 15 pitches in an inning are “freebies” because that’s considered a normal workload. Once the pitcher throws more than 15 in an inning, the penalties kick in. 1 point for every pitch over 15 is added to the point total.

 

So here’s an example. Game is tied in the 7^th inning with 2 outs, runners on 2^nd and 3^rd, and the pitcher’s already thrown 18 pitches with the count 3-1. The computer does the lookup and makes the calculation in milliseconds.

 

11 points from values + 7 points from values innsc + 4 pints for pitches = 22 points for that pitch.

 

I’ll comment on your suggestions.

 

“My back hurts and my arm feels like its going to fall off”. Does that add stress? Of course it does, but how does one begin to measure it?

 

“The weather is lousy.” Does that add to stress? I’m sure it does to some degree, but it’s the same for both pitchers.

 

“The umpire has a very tight zone today” Does that add to stress? Again, I’m sure it does but how does one begin to measure it, and for that matter how does one know that perception is true?

 

“My SS can’t field one ball hit to him.” Does that add stress? Prolly does, but as I’m sure anyone who knows much about pitching understands, if that’s something that a pitcher allows to put pressure on him, he really shouldn’t be pitching. The ball has to be thrown, period. If a pitcher doesn’t understand he has no control over anything other than executing the pitch and fielding his position, he’s not gonna be put on the bump very often.

 

“Most of my teammates were out partying all night and hung over.” Once more, prolly does add to the stress somehow, but what does that have to do with pitching, and how would anyone measure it?

 

“The team's bats went dead so it's my job to hold things together for 5-7 innings” I’m pretty sure I’ve already recognized that’s an issue and factored it in.

 

“…the wind is blowing out to CF 19mph”. That’s another one of those things that may well add stress to the situation, but its equal on both pitchers.

 

I’m definitely not trying to say there aren’t many many more things affecting the stress on any given pitch than the ones I’ve come up with. And, I’m not saying that if they all were taken in to consideration the result wouldn’t be more valid. What I am saying is, as far as I know there’s no way to factor those things in, in a way that’s simple, and can be programmed into a computer. I’m not trying to come up with the perfect metric! I’m only trying to see if its possible to put values on something that as far as I know, no one has ever done.

 

Now if we were talking about strictly ML players, I can see how it would be pretty simple to factor in a big wind blowing out. If a guy was a GB pitcher, he’d be under a lot less stress than a gout who was a FB pitcher. But for ANY level below pro ball, where does that info come from?

 

How ‘bout a tight zone? I don’t know of any way, even using ML data, that would tell me how that would effect a given pitcher. I’d ASSUME a pitcher with great control wouldn’t be bothered as much as one who’s wild, but how does one quantify that?

 

So that’s what I have, but I still have lots and lots of questions. Prolly the biggest one is, why does anyone care how much stress a pitcher is under? I can only conclude that it has something to do with his arm health and/or how ready he is to throw his next turn. The point is, I don’t know, but then again, I’m not the guy talking about “stress” pitches or innings in interviews.

 

If you take that as an argument and therefore aren’t willing to engage in a discourse, so be it. I’m simply looking for answers.

It's not only baserunners, but the speed of the runners. As just one example, Rickey Henderson in the day could blow up an inning for a pitcher all by himself, once he got on first.

 

Big Papi on first...........you see where I'm going with this

Originally Posted by Green Light:

It's not only baserunners, but the speed of the runners. As just one example, Rickey Henderson in the day could blow up an inning for a pitcher all by himself, once he got on first.

 

Big Papi on first...........you see where I'm going with this

 

GL,

 

Believe me I know exactly what you saying, and I don’t disagree at all.  But here’s the problem. I’m sitting at a HS game keeping score with a piece of software that allows me to put in these different factors. These factors need to be able to be acquired automatically, but where do I find the data that will tell me a particular runner is more of a threat to steal than another?

 

For a while I considered sticking in a factor for batting position. FI, there’d be more stress on the pitcher if the # 3 hitter were up with 1 out and the bases loaded than if it were the #9 hitter. Unfortunately, while baseball dogma says the 9^th hitter in a lineup isn’t as good as the 3^rd hitter, remember I’m talking about HS. On our team for instance, since 2007 the 9^th hitter is far from the worst hitter.

 

That problem aside, what happens if there’s a pinch hitter and the worst hitter on the team is put into the 3^rd spot because the guy got hurt? There’s just way too many “issues” for me. I’d love to do it, but only if there were ways to get that information automatically.

The one thing I would argue is the further behind, the more stress statement. I would say the closer the game, the more stress. The reason is each run allowed means so much more in a close game. If a team is behind by 8 runs, allowing one more is much less stressful than being tied 2-2 late in a game and allowing one run. It could be the difference in the game, whereas the difference between being down by 9 vs 8 isn't that much. Hope that makes sense.

Stress: a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.  (according to Google).

 

This cannot be "measured" in baseball.  You're looking for answers on how to quantify pitching stress Stats, and it simply cannot be done.  What do you want to do, insert computers into pitchers' brains to track data? For like the thousandth time, not everything can nor should be statistically measured.  

 

I'm extremely curious as to your logic when you state that something shouldn't be statistically measured. If it is possible to measure something, why not measure it?

My apologies, I meant to say "not everything can OR should be measured".  My logic is that just because something can be measured, what purpose does it serve?  I could probably measure how many times I pick up the phone each day, but who cares?  What does that matter?  

 

MLB teams could measure how many successfully fielded ground balls they get on day games right after they put down fresh grass seed in relation to day games with no new seen down for at least 2 days.   Could that be measured? SURE! Does anybody care? No!  

 

In this thread we are referring to "stress" as something mental, therefore we automatically know it cannot be statistically measured.  It's in our head.  Unless we get some crazy technology that we are going to implant into our pitchers, there is no point in trying to get answers for this.  We can all guess as to what might be "stressful" for a pitcher whether it is a situation or whatever...but it's all guesses because nobody can ever know without going into the pitcher's head and body.  It's just kind of dumb to even wonder about....just my opinion.  

Gotcha. Bear with me here, as I'd like to play Devil's Advocate.

 

If, theoretically speaking, neuroscientists were to discover accurate ways to measure stress levels within a person's brain during different times, do you believe that would be a relevant measurement to make?

 

Professional teams often spend millions of dollars to do biomechanical research on players. I'd be shocked to hear that such technology isn't being used if it is available.

 

http://www.baseballprospectus.....php?articleid=21510

JH,

 

Hell yeah.  If that was available and was proven to work...it would be awesome to see.  I love the mental/psych side of sports.  

 

You're probably right, it is likely this sort of thing is being developed somewhere right now. If it does come around, I'll pay attention.

I don't mean to sound distant or allusive, but neuroscientific research is very much being developed and occurring at the professional level. It will be a while before the public becomes a privy to the information, fortunately or unfortunately.

 

Without these specific scientific measures, it could be very difficult to quantify such a thing. It wouldn't surprise me to see a person like Tom House or Dr. Fleisig with ASMI embrace such research with open arms. But until then, baseball fans may not have access to it.

I think we're starting to talk about 2 different things here.  Neuroscientific research will give a much clearer picture about the stress a pitcher actually goes through.  I'm sure technology will get to the point where this can be measured.  It may be a while before devices can be attached to a pitcher to measure this in game situations though.  Maybe I'm wrong.

 

I think what Stats is trying to get at (and I don't mean to speak for him) is a little different.  I think there are certainly different game situations that will produce more stress in a pitcher.  I think you can try to quantify some of those situations to come up with a number of "high stress" pitches a pitcher has thrown.  What it will not measure is how much stress a particular pitcher will feel under these circumstances.  Some pitchers will obviously feel more stress than others.  Some guys are cooler under pressure than others.  But I don't have a doubt that some situations are more stressful than others for any pitcher.  Obviously, this will not take into consideration all stress factors, but it possibly could take into account many of the game situation related high stress pitches a pitcher might face.

 

Assuming that a pitch in a high stress situation is harder on a pitcher than a low stress pitch, you could assign a value, say 1.5 to a high stress pitch.  So if a pitcher throws 100 pitches in a game and 40 of them were in high stress situations, the adjusted pitch count may be 120.  That's what I think could be accomplished.  Of course we are assuming that the "high stress" pitches are harder on a pitcher than a "low stress" pitch.  We are also assuming they are 50% harder on a pitcher.  That 50% could possibly be adjusted by whatever neuroscientific research is out there that could quantify how much harder a high stress pitch is on a pitcher vs a low stress pitch.

 

Hope this makes some kind of sense to you guys.

bballman- Some thoughts on the topic:

 

http://www.hardballtimes.com/m.../crucial-situations/

http://www.hardballtimes.com/m...l-situations-part-2/

http://www.hardballtimes.com/m...tuations-part-three/

http://www.insidethebook.com/li.shtml

http://www.baseball-reference.com/about/wpa.shtml

Originally Posted by bballman:

The one thing I would argue is the further behind, the more stress statement. I would say the closer the game, the more stress. The reason is each run allowed means so much more in a close game. If a team is behind by 8 runs, allowing one more is much less stressful than being tied 2-2 late in a game and allowing one run. It could be the difference in the game, whereas the difference between being down by 9 vs 8 isn't that much. Hope that makes sense.

 

It does make sense and I did consider it. Here’s how I ended up going the way I went. To me it was a case of trying to quantify when the situation became more “desperate”. Since I already had taking the point in the game into consideration with the inning, what I was left with was trying to determine if the game being close gave the most stress than trying to keep it from getting out of hand. In my mind, the closer a team is in score, the chance of coming back is greater. The closer the situation gets to being “hopeless”, the less they’ll fight.

 

Tell ya what though. See what you can come up with for numbers and values like what I did in the VALUESINNSC.pdf link and I’ll be happy to look at it again. Like I said, this is all pretty new to me, so I’m open to looking at anything. Right now it looks like you and I have a difference of opinion of what would be a “higher” stress situation. I don’t know for sure one way or the other, but I get the feeling its something there wouldn’t be total agreement on.

 

I suspect the kind of offense a team has makes a big difference on how they look at the issue. The team I score for hasn’t scored a lot of runs for the number of games they’ve won. The HC’s philosophy is to depend on pitching and defense to keep them in games, and use aggressive base running and putting the ball in play to score runs. One of our biggest local rivals is just the opposite. They’ve got knuckle draggers all through the lineup and pummel opponents, not really caring how many runs they give up, and usually have one of the poorest fielding teams in the area.

 

The trick would be trying to come up with a matrix that would work for both teams.

Originally Posted by James G:

This cannot be "measured" in baseball.  You're looking for answers on how to quantify pitching stress Stats, and it simply cannot be done.  What do you want to do, insert computers into pitchers' brains to track data? For like the thousandth time, not everything can nor should be statistically measured.  

 

Well James, I beg to differ, especially since I’ve already quantified it. I admit it could be more precise, but there’s no doubt in my mind that if an event takes place it can be measured to see if there are tendencies. I’m no Pollyanna who believe the numbers tell the entire story and guarantee a result. But, there can be no argument that knowing more about any given event makes it easier to understand.

 

That has nothing to do with sticking computers into pitchers’ brains. If there were nothing to the numbers, why do all ML team spend so much time looking at hitting and pitching data?

Looks like some interesting stuff.  A LOT to go through in one sitting. 

 

Stats, this looks like, at first glance, some stuff you can look at to come up with some of your high stress situations.  Win probability looks like a good measure.  The lower the win probability, the lower the stress, I would think. 

 

Stats, I know you score HS games and think in terms of that for some of this stuff you do.  However, in my mind, there are way too many variables in HS ball to take everything into consideration.  I think using MLB as a standard is best and then apply it to HS, even though it won't be really accurate.  I considered a close game to be more stressful because if a team gives up a run late in a close or tied game, the chances of that team coming back become slim.  In HS, it may be different because the quality of the late inning pitchers may drop tremendously as well as the factors you mentioned in terms of scoring runs. 

 

I just think taking MLB standards is the easiest way to go.  Apply the metrics to HS and know that it's not exactly right, but will have to be close enough.  JMHO.

bballman,

 

You’ve echoed my thinking very well. For several years I’ve assigned stress to pitches thinking about arm health, pretty much along the lines of what you said. My thinking began with Pitcher Abuse Points(PAP), back in the ‘90’s. After a few years PAP was adjusted to PAP^3 because it was seen as being more precise. I attempted to factor in rest between outings and pitches thrown with runners on base.

 

What I’m doing now is merely an extension of that thinking, where the factors I was using are better defined and more factors are taken into consideration. Since as far as I know no one else is trying to do anything like it, I’m pretty much flying blindly, and therefore taking as many steps back as forward.

 

In fact, I likely wouldn’t have done anything except that the more ML games I watch, the more I’ve been hearing about “stress” pitches and innings. I doubt anyone would be talking about it if managers weren’t somehow beginning to take it into consideration. I watch a lot of Indians’ games, and “stress” innings and pitches are creeping into the announcer and pre-game speak. Knowing Francona comes from an organization in Boston that was on the leading edge when it came to metrics, and after listening to him on TV during his managing hiatus, something tells me that even though the general public doesn’t know precisely what’s going on, something’s happening.

 

And watching how the Indians’ are handling their pitchers makes me more sure than ever. Out of the clear blue, a starter who had been going every 5^th day is suddenly given an extra day’s rest and it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the number of pitches, but rather how much stress he’s pitching with. Whatever’s happening, their starters have been lights out, and these aren’t exactly guys who have great marquee value.

 

For me its fun trying to see if I can figger out what’s going on.

 

FWIW, although I haven’t been able to score all the games this season, I have scored a few. This shows how what I was talking about is reflected in the pitchers.

http://www.infosports.com/scor...images/papstress.pdf

 

I’m still trying to figger out how to show the stuff I’m doing now.

 

bballman,

 

I know it sounds like pure bullheadedness, but I refuse to use anything based on ML data as a basis for any other level. I’ve done it before and been burned every time. The ML game is simply not the same, and in some cases isn’t even close.

 

There aren’t really any more variables in HSB than MLB. What’s happening is, the range of what happens is far wider. But it really doesn’t make any difference because I’m not trying to take EVERYTHING into consideration. Those factors I’ve used so far are pretty standard and have been for many years.

 

It may well be that there’s more stress in a situation where the score is close than if it isn’t. I don’t know. But whichever, it has to stand on its own because other things including the lateness of the inning are already considered. I’ll try to explain it because I think its worth understanding.

 

Forgetting all other factors, let’s see if we can determine what is more stressful. The pitcher is ready to throw a pitch and all we know is the difference in the score. Is there more pressure to execute a good pitch when the score is close, when the pitcher’s team is significantly ahead, or if his team is significantly behind?

 

I’m in the process of trying to convert the valueinnsc table to it being more stressful the close the score to see how it works. I’m having difficulty doing it because its not intuitive to me. That doesn’t mean its not valid, but that I’m having to change my entire way of looking at things. I don’t know how it will work in the end, but I’m at least willing to give it a go.

If you are talking high school ball you will definitely need a variable to quantify Dad's angle to home plate with his JUGS gun.

bballman,

 

See if this is what you envision for stress depending on inning and score.

 

http://www.infosports.com/scor...ages/valuesinnsc.pdf

 

 

The only reason I say to base it on MLB is because all the teams are relatively close in terms of talent.  The biggest problem with trying to run statistical analysis on HS is because of the huge discrepancy of the competition faced.  Even within the same conference, the competition between teams can be immense.  With MLB, the gap is much smaller.  That's all I'm saying.

 

That's all I'm saying.  I don't think there are more variables, it's just the range of competition to consider as a factor is slimmer.  I think when you start adding in who the competition is and how that adds to the stress factor, it gets too cumbersome.  So just kind of pretending most all else is about equal, other than the game situation, makes things simpler.  Hope that makes sense.

 

This comment is the basis for what I am saying.  Although there are some variations from team to team in the MLB, they are not as drastic as those variations in HS.

 

Yeah, looks like that's what I'm talking about.  More points associated with a closer score and the further the score differentiates, the less stress involved.

Stats- Not to be the bearer of bad news, but the PAP theory was rebutted and essentially overhauled about 9 years ago, here, on page 449: http://www.amazon.com/Neyer-Ja...orical/dp/0743261585

 

 

Not sure how to quantify any one of these or even if it possible.

 

On close game versus large run differential, I think there is more stress but depends on the inning. Maybe something of a comparative of run diff (+1, -2, etc) versus innings. so that if it is 2-1 in first not so stressful, but 2-1 in 7th (in HS) can be very stressful. While just opposite may be true early. In first inning down 5-0 would prove to be stressful because of trying to hold runs down, while down 5-0 in 7th less stressful because of ability to overcome the deficit? Just a thought

 

As far as strike zone, I have no idea how to quantify it but the tighter the strike zone, the more stress. A very visual idea might be the LLWS (not going to comment on umpires, just saying what I felt). In games the starting pitchers for the championship game pitched. Earlier in the tournament for both pitchers the strike zone was wide. They were relaxed because they were getting calls. In Championship game, a very tight zone. It was all over both thier faces the stress, They "aimed" more than earlier.

 

third quantifer might be importance of the game. First couple game sof year or agianst a non league opponent, not as much stress as a league game versus a good team or tournament game where it is win or go home.

 

I have no idea how to build that in, but those are truly stress versus not stress IMO 

Originally Posted by bballman:

The only reason I say to base it on MLB is because all the teams are relatively close in terms of talent.  The biggest problem with trying to run statistical analysis on HS is because of the huge discrepancy of the competition faced.  Even within the same conference, the competition between teams can be immense.  With MLB, the gap is much smaller.  That's all I'm saying.

 

I understand that, but the overall talent and skills at the ML level are so far above HS, there’s just no way to compare the two.

 

That's all I'm saying.  I don't think there are more variables, it's just the range of competition to consider as a factor is slimmer.  I think when you start adding in who the competition is and how that adds to the stress factor, it gets too cumbersome.  So just kind of pretending most all else is about equal, other than the game situation, makes things simpler.  Hope that makes sense.

 

And that’s why I won’t even consider the competition. I might if there were some common database to use to compare players, but there isn’t. That’s why I never compare players from our team to other teams. To me its valid to compare players on our team because they play against virtually the same competition. But even when I compare players from say the 2013 team to the 2007 team things get out of whack really quickly because everything was different from the bats to the competition.

 

This comment is the basis for what I am saying.  Although there are some variations from team to team in the MLB, they are not as drastic as those variations in HS.

 

And that’s why trying to extrapolate what goes on in the ML for HS won’t work.

 

Yeah, looks like that's what I'm talking about.  More points associated with a closer score and the further the score differentiates, the less stress involved.

 

The best I can do is to score a game using that matrix that already scored using the other one and see what I see. I know that using the old one really gave me some interesting info to look at as the game went on. Maybe using this one will do the same, but not being intuitive for me, its gonna take a bit more to follow it.

 

But that’s ok! My goal was never to prove my way was the right way or even the best way. I’m just trying to see if there’s something useful that can be found.

Originally Posted by J H:

Stats- Not to be the bearer of bad news, but the PAP theory was rebutted and essentially overhauled about 9 years ago, here, on page 449: http://www.amazon.com/Neyer-Ja...orical/dp/0743261585

 

 Well J H, I’m not about to send Amazon $13.00 just to read page 449. How about you condence it and let me know what it says.

 

I know a lot of people scream and holler about PAP, but most of them don’t understand what its purpose was. Those same people complain that pitch counts are no good and its all because pitchers don’t fall apart at some magic number. But all PAP was trying to do originally was identify pitchers who were being worked very hard in college.

 

All I’ve used it for personally is to make sure the coaches, players, and parents know the workloads. I don’t tell anyone what too much is because that isn’t up to me. All I do is show the numbers.

 

What’s been great on our teams has been that our HC makes damn sure players are getting lots of rest, and seldom leaves them out there to keep throwing just to win a game. Plus, the pitching limitation rules in our state on HS players are the toughest in the country, so its not likely there’d be many abuses anywhere in Ca.. But a few years back I got hold of the numbers for a team in Tx and I can tell you it was something that would make even the biggest naysayer take a 2^nd look at.

 

In 7 years we’ve only had one player have TJ surgery, and that was because of his pitching outside the HS system. The team I ran the numbers for had 2 pitcher on the team go down needing TJ surgery, and 2 others needing scoped in just 1 year. To be honest I can’t say it was the HS team for certain that caused the problems, but I can say for certain that the workload of their pitchers on the HS team made our guys look like part time relievers.

http://books.google.com/books?...ge&q&f=false

 

Page 449-466.

 

While I agree with bballman that the correlations between MLB caliber and any other level are so wildly inaccurate that comparisons are essentially meaningless, formulas are formulas. I highly recommend reading this book, as well as many others (including Tom Tango's book, which I linked to previously in this thread) on the topic.

 

EDIT: I realize that it is not your intention, but your responses often times have a defensive tone. I hope you don't take my counterpoints as an attack. I wrote my Master's Thesis paper on economic inefficiencies related to the usage of pitching staffs in baseball and I use statistical analysis everyday for my job. I'm in. It's useful, and it works, pretty much always.

Originally Posted by chefmike7777:

Not sure how to quantify any one of these or even if it possible.

 

On close game versus large run differential, I think there is more stress but depends on the inning. Maybe something of a comparative of run diff (+1, -2, etc) versus innings. so that if it is 2-1 in first not so stressful, but 2-1 in 7th (in HS) can be very stressful. While just opposite may be true early. In first inning down 5-0 would prove to be stressful because of trying to hold runs down, while down 5-0 in 7th less stressful because of ability to overcome the deficit? Just a thought

 

That’s why the inning is directly linked. I look up the combination of the inning and the score, plus the count, the number of outs, and the runners to get a total for each pitch.

 

As far as strike zone, I have no idea how to quantify it but the tighter the strike zone, the more stress. A very visual idea might be the LLWS (not going to comment on umpires, just saying what I felt). In games the starting pitchers for the championship game pitched. Earlier in the tournament for both pitchers the strike zone was wide. They were relaxed because they were getting calls. In Championship game, a very tight zone. It was all over both thier faces the stress, They "aimed" more than earlier.

 

No doubt a tighter zone will affect the stress, but it’s the same for both teams so to me it nulls itself out. Sure some pitchers handle it better than others, but I’m sure whether or not the pitcher’s girlfriend was 2 weeks late would have generate even more stress. I’m not trying to get into every pitcher’s head. I’m only trying to find generic numbers that are generally the same for any pitcher.

 

third quantifer might be importance of the game. First couple game sof year or agianst a non league opponent, not as much stress as a league game versus a good team or tournament game where it is win or go home.

 

Agreed. But that would change every game. Again, if there were a way to access the records of every HS player the way there’s access to the records of every ML player it wouldn’t be such a challenge. But as long as the stress because of the game is equal for both teams, to me it isn’t a salient factor.

 

 I have no idea how to build that in, but those are truly stress versus not stress IMO 

 

They could be built in fairly easily, if there were access to accurate player data.

 

 

J H,

 

Thanx for making it possible to read those pages. I will, but right now I’m a bit bizzy with trying to score the game from last night again.

 

I understand that formulas are formulas, but the problem is, its very uncommon that any HS team has the data to plug into those formulas. As many data points as I track, I had one heck of a time finding something as seemingly simple as what runners were on on every pitch, how many outs there were on every pitch, and what the score was on every pitch.

 

Then too there’s this problem. Pitcher gets a foul ball on a 1-2 strike count then, throws a ball on the next pitch. Most scorers show 1 pitch thrown on 1-2, but what really happened is there were 2 pitches thrown on that count, and there was a different amount of “stress” on each one. Luckily I’ve always tracked every pitch as opposed to the count, but I seldom run across other who have that information. With more and more people scoring electronically that will change, but for the time being, there’s just a lot of that data unavailable.

 

I don’t meant to sound defensive, but I must say it does get old to have people challenge what I’m trying to do without offering any alternative, as though I’m trying to tear the very fabric of baseball. But all I ever try to do is look for truth, and I seldom blindly accept dogma.

 

I can honestly say that I don’t feel at all attacked by anyone’s “counterpoints” in this thread. I’m so far out there in the darkness, I’m searching for any light I can find. Plus I try to be careful not to get overly complex, just in case someone out there might want to try looking at their pitchers this way. Right now I can look up the numbers from a PDF and compute the points on a pitch in about 10 seconds. That’s plenty of time since most pitches take longer than 15 seconds to be thrown. I’m fortunate that I have the computer to do it for me automatically, but not everyone will have that luxury.

 

Sounds like you prove

 

 

 

 

 

 

Originally Posted by J H:

http://books.google.com/books?...ge&q&f=false

 

Page 449-466.

 

While I agree with bballman that the correlations between MLB caliber and any other level are so wildly inaccurate that comparisons are essentially meaningless, formulas are formulas. I highly recommend reading this book, as well as many others (including Tom Tango's book, which I linked to previously in this thread) on the topic.

 

EDIT: I realize that it is not your intention, but your responses often times have a defensive tone. I hope you don't take my counterpoints as an attack. I wrote my Master's Thesis paper on economic inefficiencies related to the usage of pitching staffs in baseball and I use statistical analysis everyday for my job. I'm in. It's useful, and it works, pretty much always.

 

Sounds like you prove the old saw “What you can measure you can manage” every day.

OK bballman,

 

Here’s the same game scored using the different matrixes.

http://www.infosports.com/scor...er/images/oldway.pdf

http://www.infosports.com/scor...er/images/newway.pdf

 

I just finished so I haven’t had any time yet to look at them, but at 1^st blush I really don’t see any difference other than the numbers are significantly larger using the new way. That doesn’t mean they aren’t more valid though. Its just that I do have trouble admitting I may not have come up with the “best” way to do something.

 

 

J H,

 

I read the response by Jazayerli and Woolner, but didn’t see anything where PAP was rebutted. I knew they overhauled it from PAP to PAP^3. Am I missing something in the James book? I did a search and didn’t find PAP anyplace else.

 

Stats- His analysis begins on page 449.

J H,

 

I looked over what James had to say, but as was said in the response, he was shooting at something the developers had already said was flawed, and corrections made when PAP was revamped.

 

Here’s the bottom line. Forget what ML teams use whatever system they decide on to try to keep injuries down. Look at it from the perspective of an amateur coach who doesn’t have the luxury of full time medical people on hand, full time nutrition people on hand, full time analysts on hand, and a wide range of other top professionals to help them.

 

In pap, points are given in a very simple way that anyone with a simple spreadsheet or calculator can do to get an idea about whether or not their any of their pitchers are being overused/abused. You must keep in mind too, that while winning is better than losing, in the amateur ranks its all supposed to be about development and protecting the players from as much harm as is reasonable.

 

Even James notes that the better ML pitchers will get the most time, but look at why that is. Billions of $$$$$ are riding on it. What kind of fool would overwork a 10YO kid just so they could win one game? It doesn’t make sense because the payback for that win has so little value.

As far as strike zone, I have no idea how to quantify it but the tighter the strike zone, the more stress. A very visual idea might be the LLWS (not going to comment on umpires, just saying what I felt). In games the starting pitchers for the championship game pitched. Earlier in the tournament for both pitchers the strike zone was wide. They were relaxed because they were getting calls. In Championship game, a very tight zone. It was all over both thier faces the stress, They "aimed" more than earlier.

 

No doubt a tighter zone will affect the stress, but it’s the same for both teams so to me it nulls itself out. Sure some pitchers handle it better than others, but I’m sure whether or not the pitcher’s girlfriend was 2 weeks late would have generate even more stress. I’m not trying to get into every pitcher’s head. I’m only trying to find generic numbers that are generally the same for any pitcher.

 

third quantifer might be importance of the game. First couple game sof year or agianst a non league opponent, not as much stress as a league game versus a good team or tournament game where it is win or go home.

 

Agreed. But that would change every game. Again, if there were a way to access the records of every HS player the way there’s access to the records of every ML player it wouldn’t be such a challenge. But as long as the stress because of the game is equal for both teams, to me it isn’t a salient factor.

 

My question is on these 2 points is what does being the same for each pitcher in tight strike zone, and the "type" of game have to do with what you are trying to find out? Aren't you trying to find out for each pitcher thier stress? If so, then the stress the opposing pitcher would not be a factor. If the reason you ae doing this is to judge for a certain pitcher (whomever you are measuring at moment) when his stress is at a certain level to change something (take him out, longer rest,etc.), then it is all about the factors for them, what happens to other pitcher is irrevelant.

 

Just my thoughts, I am a stats guy, but nowhere near what you do. I am impressed you think it thru to that level. My brain just doesn't go that far, I guess

When Tommy Lasorda was pitching in the Cuban Winter League, he was non-verbally questioning the umpires "strike zone". The umpire opened his blue jacket and exhibited a 45 pistol.

Of course Tommy nodded "your strike zone is perfect".

 

Now that is stress!!!!

 

Bob

chefmike7777,

 

It simple, at least to me. If the stress is the same, why measure it? I’m not interested in trying to figure out which pitcher has the better mental approach. All I’m trying to do is quantify what is generally accepted as being a pitch or inning that had more than “normal” stress in response to what is being talked about in baseball circles. When you begin taking personal attributes into consideration, to me that falls under things that can only be determined by the coaches because they’re SUPPOSED to be aware of all kinds of personal things those of us not on the field will never know.

 

FI, if a pitcher has a strained hammy, but not so bad he can’t pitch, there’s no way they’d want the other team to know because they might start dropping bunts all over the place. So every time there was a bunting situation it would prolly be higher stress than normal, but that’s not something I’m trying to measure. If the coach wants to measure it, that’s his business.

 

I really appreciate your thoughts. Its difficult to explain exactly what it is I’m looking for right now because its so early on in the process. No one I know of has come with any way to really use the amount of stress or pressure, yet. But since it is being talked about, I have to assume its being used somehow, and I’m trying to figure out what it is.

 

The process just makes sense to me. Maybe its because I’ve always been tuned in to pitching in the sense of trying to protect young arms from needless injury. It seems like the next step in the process that began with PAP.

 

I don’t know if you score games, but if you do you probably get the same questions most of us do during a game. Most often a coach wants to know the total pitch count because that’s been the standard for so long. While they may have different limits personally and for each pitcher, I can’t think of many coaches now who ignore pitch counts completely.

 

I’ve always been a believer in pitch count limits, but like many others have trouble with black and white limits because there are so many factors that go into it. That’s why when I got into the factors for this, I wanted to include number of pitches because I know for certain there’s a fatigue factor that can come into play, but I didn’t want to make it be based on total pitches to that point because there’s so many different ways to get to the total.

 

I went to only considering the number of pitches in the inning because other factors like the inning are already being considered. So now it becomes much more of a precise indication of fatigue. The 1^st 15 pitches in an inning are not considered because that seems to be the “normal” number of pitches for an inning. After that the “penalty” is 1 point for each pitch more than 15 on each pitch. IOW, for the 16^th pitch it 1 point, for the 17^th its 2, and for the 18^th its 3, for a total of 6.

 

I suppose that’s a throwback for me to PAP, where originally it was 1 point for every pitch over 100, and the modified PAP^3 which is the number of pitches minus 100 cubed, which raises the value of points much more. I.e., under the old way 105 pitches would be 5 points. Under the newer way it would be 5^3 or 125 points. Since I consider the stress for every pitch, a pitch over 15 in an inning will be counted for each pitch. For 16 it would be 1, for 17, 2, for 18 3, for 19 4, so that 1^st pitch over 15 would be counted 4 times. The 2^nd pitch over 15 3 times, etc.

 

Have you ever done PAP or PAP^3? If you haven’t and are curious, go to http://www.infosports.com/scor...mages/pitching13.pdf and do a find on PAP. Those are the numbers for our HS team’s pitchers in ’13. I can change the number that triggers a point, and I use 80 for inning games.

 

Yes, numbers are much higher the new way.  I would suspect that it is because this was a close game.  Looks like it was a 1-1 game into the 8th inning.  If you are going to assign a higher level of stress to a closer score, then the numbers will be higher because it is a more stressful situation.  Maybe try charting a game that was a blow out both ways and see how that affects the pressure per pitch.  Better yet, take this game and change the score on your own and see how it affects both methods of calculating. 

 

Bottom line, it comes down to the assumptions.  If you assume a closer game will be more stressful, then the pressure per pitch will be higher in a close game.  If you assume the farther you get behind, the more stressful, that will be reflected as the numbers increasing the farther a team gets behind.  Neither team got very far behind in this game, so the numbers should be lower given the assumption.  The numbers here are higher in the new format because it was a close game all the way to the end.  In your first example, it is assumed it is less stressful to pitch in a close game, so the numbers are lower.  It's all about the starting assumptions.

Originally Posted by bballman:

Yes, numbers are much higher the new way.  I would suspect that it is because this was a close game.  Looks like it was a 1-1 game into the 8th inning.  If you are going to assign a higher level of stress to a closer score, then the numbers will be higher because it is a more stressful situation.  Maybe try charting a game that was a blow out both ways and see how that affects the pressure per pitch.  Better yet, take this game and change the score on your own and see how it affects both methods of calculating. 

 

I hope you didn’t think I was bothered by the higher stress numbers. Over the years I’ve learned that making changes to something often looks strange at first but doesn’t take a great deal of getting used to. I’ll be scoring the Indians/Braves game this afternoon live, and I’ll see how it goes. When I go back and rescore a game, it usually takes only a couple minutes per half inning, so I don’t get the opportunity to look at a lot of different things like I do when scoring a game live. The reason I’ve come up with a lot of the things I have, is to kill some dead time during games, and there’s almost always a lot of that.

 

Bottom line, it comes down to the assumptions.  If you assume a closer game will be more stressful, then the pressure per pitch will be higher in a close game.  If you assume the farther you get behind, the more stressful, that will be reflected as the numbers increasing the farther a team gets behind.  Neither team got very far behind in this game, so the numbers should be lower given the assumption.  The numbers here are higher in the new format because it was a close game all the way to the end.  In your first example, it is assumed it is less stressful to pitch in a close game, so the numbers are lower.  It's all about the starting assumptions.

 

I know that, and its why I didn’t mind changing my assumptions. I still don’t know which way is “best”, but I’ve been tinkering with some other stuff based on the stress and it looks like the new way may well be the more valid of the two, so its gonna stick around. I hope you don’t feel squeamish about me getting to use it every time I score a game or gen up some stats.