Do batters rush in the All-Star Game?
Posted by Andy on July 23, 2010
Recently I heard from a few folks who don't watch the All-Star Game on the basis that the game is rushed. They felt that batters go up there hacking away in an effort to get the game over with and therefore it's not worth watching.
Is there any evidence of that? Let's check some numbers.
Here's a plot showing the number of pitches throw per plate appearance each year since 2001. I've shown the data for both the entire regular season as well as the All-Star game alone each season.
(click on the graph for a larger version)
The blue line shows the average pitches per plate appearance during the regular season. As you can see, this number has been gradually increasing over the last 10 years. I definitely want to research this number a little more. I suspect it correlates somewhat with average strikeouts per 9 innings, as strikeout pitchers tend to throw more pitches than contact pitchers.
But anyway, now look at the magenta line, which shows the pitches per plate appearance for just the All-Star game. The jumpiness of the line is to be expected, given that each point represents just a single game. Most years the pitches/PA was below the league average although some years it was above.
For some reason, 2009 showed a particularly low value. I guess last year batters might really have been hacking away earlier in the count, and I can imagine that might have bothered some viewers.
For the 10-year period on the graph, MLB has averaged 3.77 pitches per plate appearance while the All-Star game has averaged 3.68 pitches per plate appearance. That's just about a 2% difference, not enough to notice I don't think. But looking at at just 2009, the difference was 3.83 regular season vs 3.23 All-Star game, a difference of 0.60 pitches per plate appearance. That's definitely enough to notice in a game--it means that on average, once every 2 batters, the plate appearance ended one pitch earlier. To me, that strongly suggests aggressive play, meaning either more strikes being thrown by pitchers or more pitches being swung at by hitters (or, more likely, both.)
Howover, there might be another effect here. Let's suppose that in general, pitches per plate appearance really does correlate with strikeouts. Again, I need to research that further, but I think it's true. The pitchers in the All-Star game are typically among the higher-strikeout guys in the game. So, one could argue that batters are swinging more freely in the All-Star game, since the vast majority of pitchers in that game are high-strikeout pitchers. (In case that's not clear, I'm suggesting that the pitchers in the All-Star might have a higher-than-league-average number of pitches per plate appearance, so the difference between the league average and what we see in the All-Star game would be more exaggerated than what appears in the plot above.)
I can see two further things worth investigating. I'll gladly do so in the coming days unless anybody else has the info already:
- What are the historical pitches/PA levels for each season historically and do they correlate with K/9 rates? (I looked at historical K/9 rates in this recent post.)
- How do the pitches/PA levels in the All-Star game compare to the regular season values for just the All-Star pitchers? For example if we look at numbers for Jimenez, Price, and the other pitchers on each roster and come to an average for just that group for the season, how does it compared to the league-wide average?
July 23rd, 2010 at 8:38 am
To really figure out if guys are hacking away, you should look at percentage of strikes swung at, or something like that. The batters may be swinging more frequently at strikes, but getting a lower percentage overall of strikes. Pitchers might not be overexerting themselves trying to throw strikes. So, it's possible there are two opposite forces possibly canceling each other out. Just a thought.
July 23rd, 2010 at 9:12 am
It's also possible that, just like the pitchers in the All-Star game may be above-average in terms of P/AB, he hitters might also be as well. Generally speaking, better batters see more pitches and, theoretically, All-Stars are better batters.
July 23rd, 2010 at 9:22 am
It's always seemed to me like hitters were being extra aggressive in the All Star Game, not because they want to get it over with quickly, but because that approach is more likely to be effective against All Star pitchers. In everyday baseball, it greatly behooves a hitter to be patient and wait for a pitch to hit--however, most pitchers in the ASG are absolutely filthy and at the top of their game. If you take the first 1 or 2 pitches, they will almost definately be strikes, and once someone like Ubaldo Jimenez or David Price gets ahead of you throwing 98-100 MPH (or Wainwright dropping those nasty hooks), you're basically done. The super patient, high OBP model of offense is very effective against mediocre and even good pitchers (who start maybe 3/4ths of regular season games), but most hitters can't afford to get behind early against ace pitchers, and often go up looking for a first or second pitch fastball to drive.
July 23rd, 2010 at 9:30 am
In addition to what Malcolm said, in a regular season game, you're going to try and make the pitchers throw more pitches in an attempt to get them out of the game earlier and get into the opposing bullpen. You can wear them down over the course of 5, 6 or 7 innings. In the All-Star game, a pitcher is only throwing 1 or 2 innings anyway, so it doesn't behoove you to try and make them throw more pitches.
July 23rd, 2010 at 9:34 am
Not to mention the fact that the next pitcher in line behind the first guy is also an all-star. Middle relief never looked so good.
July 23rd, 2010 at 9:56 am
What about the idea that the Pitchers in the All Star game probably aren't biting at the corners desperate for a strike? What's really at stake in innings 1 through 6 that a pitcher is gonna throw that 'waste' pitch to set up the next pitch or the next batter?
Also, and perhaps this was already mentioned and I just didn't quite understand it, wouldn't better pitchers throw more strikes? Either by contact, or by strikeout?
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:23 am
Since I don't know the folks you spoke with Andy I can't be sure, but I know some people who make assumptions about baseball when they really don't understand the complexity of the sport. To these people, sure it looks like the hitters are just swinging at the first couple of pitches trying to rush the game, but as Malcolm stated, there is much more to it than that.
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:25 am
One guy I heard say it recently was Tony Massarotti.
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:25 am
I think it goes without saying that Mazz understands the complexity of the sport.
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:33 am
The correlation to look at would be pitches per plate appearance of each teams ace and designated closer. In the All-Star game that's what you are getting. My guess is that the difference between a teams #1 vs #4 or #5 starter will be at least a .5 difference if not much higher. The strike vs. contact is a good guess especially since most aces and closer are strike out machines.... my guess is 3 through 5 are not nearly as low as most teams 1 and 2. Same would be true for the closer vs. All other mid relief and the fill in closer.
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:37 am
I did say "some people" but if someone like Massarotti makes a claim that batters are trying to rush, then I am sure he probably has a pretty good argument for why he believes that. The "some people" I was more or less referring to were the members of media or other athletes (Iverson was one) who likened the sport of baseball to simply a guy throwing and a guy hitting. I will clarify next time.
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:39 am
Coach Todd, great point, thanks. I've already done a lot of the research on these issues and I will be posting the results next week. You're on the right track.
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:45 am
The other theory here is you can pitch around a teams top to or three batters... never give them anything really good to swing at. The All-Star game is top hitter after top hitter. You can't keep pitching around the batter. Pitchers are forced to go after each hitter. It would be interesting to see what the average rbi per batter is in this game per homerun hit. As well as number of walks vs. regular season game. My guess is everything relates to the talent in the game. Guys take pride in the game... don't think they are rushing anything... they are trying to take it all in. Trust me on that one.
July 23rd, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Another thing to consider is that players in All-Star games probably don't step up to the plate looking to draw a walk, at least not as often as they would in a regular season game.
July 23rd, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Oh yeah, Statboy, good point. I forgot to put that in my original post. Just about all the time, teams in these all-star games drew 0, 1, or 2 walks. I think there's just 1 instance of a team drawing 3 walks.
July 23rd, 2010 at 2:01 pm
[...] average pitchers per PA has gradually increased since 1988. (I showed some of the data in this post and will show the rest of it next week.) In 1988 it was 3.59 pitches/PA and in 2009 it was 3.83 [...]
July 24th, 2010 at 12:09 am
What was it Mark Twain said about statistics?
Anyway I am no statistician, but other than 2008, these differences do not appear to me to be statistically significant.
In ten years three AS games have higher counts and two are essentially equivalent to regular games. The last four seasons split 2-2.
What is that in 2005 a little over a tenth of a pitch per batter? In 2004 a few hundredths of a pitch? I would guess one could pick any single date during the season to see these same kinds of fluctuations over a decade (maybe look for low/high counts at beginning/end of season?)