Pitching by the Numbers: Falling behind

I’m very pleased that so many of you last week liked the deployment of my unconventional but easy-to-understand stats that help us better assess pitchers. And starting pitching is where the profits are made or lost and thus where our fantasy championships are decided.

I’ve been at this here since February though. If you missed anything and want to see how your pitchers graded last year, check out my archives.

This week, let’s use our MLB play-by-play database from last year to try to put a finger on something that’s usually chalked up to intangibles: competitiveness. Namely, how effectively do pitchers battle when they are behind in the count (2-0, 2-1, three-ball). The first thing to note is how very important it is to NOT fall behind in the count. In 2014, the league average in getting outs on these counts was 51%, meaning that batters have a .490 on-base rate in these situations (either via putting the ball into play or walking as this data set includes every walk).

So pitchers with great control are going to have an edge here and that’s evidenced on our leader board. This may seem like tautology but it’s a rarely-discussed benefit of pitchers with great control. They can afford to nibble at the plate because falling behind for them is not a big deal, as they are still far more likely to force a batter to earn his way on with a hit. The other thing we gain from this list is some sense of which pitchers are tough to square up even when the hitters are ahead in the count. This starts with the leader on this list, one of our frequent favorites based on a wide range of 2014 stats.

As I detailed last week when addressing how batters are mostly in control of outcomes, we have to be wary about randomness (how hitters happen to generally hit against a pitcher) heavily influencing pitching stats. One way to check this is to see which pitchers appeared on this leader board in both 2013 and 2014.

That gives us the following group that we can safely classify as very competitive, even in the context of a big-league hurler, when it comes to battling hitters from behind: Iwakuma, Colon, Haren, Hernandez, Price, Bumgarner, Collmenter, Wainwright, Garza and Ryu.

What about our 2014 leader, Hughes? He was terrible at 50% (league average in 2013 was 54% outs when ahead like this in the count). That tells us clearly that it’s not just walks (Hughes has always had very good control). And it also tells us that either Hughes was very lucky in this stat in 2014, very unlucky in 2013 or just a fundamentally different pitcher in 2014.

I’m a big believer in Door No. 3: He has become a fundamentally different pitcher now freed from the fear of being a fly-ball pitcher in one of the worst parks for a RHP, Yankee Stadium. But I want to check myself because this is a nice story and we do like stories. Maybe it’s just too convenient. We’ll soon find out if Hughes, who was actually unlucky last year in ERA, can maintain his sterling fundamentals. I believe he is though I’m not a big believer in belief. Hughes, though, was generally cheap, which is more important.

What about the trailers? Those near the bottom of our list. The notables: A.J. Burnett (48%), Jenrry Mejia (49%), Trevor Bauer (49%), Max Scherzer (50%), Brandon McCarthy (51%), Ian Kennedy (51%), Sonny Gray (51%), Clay Buchholz (51%), Drew Hutchison (52%), Gio Gonzalez (52%). Some struggle with control, of course, but not all.

Scherzer though was 59% in 2013. Also, last year, lest you Scherzer owners worry unnecessarily, he ranked fourth best (again out of 149) in the percentage of at bats against where he takes the count from 1-1 to 1-2.

And astute readers will question why a bunch of guys who are about average are near the bottom of this list (the highest among them, Gonzalez, ranks 117 of 149). The answer is that the trailers compile the vast majority of these at bats because the leaders are hardly ever falling behind hitters. So it’s this Scherzer stat on taking batters from 1-1 to 1-2 (instead of 2-1) that is actually the key to avoiding these dangerous counts altogether. And that’s the list we’ll be examining here next week.