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Ever since Omar Minaya rebuilt the Mets, there have been many heated discussions about his stockpiling of Latin American players. I thought that it might be interesting to see what the PI can tell us about this subject. I am not presenting them to you as a judgment, just as a presentation of facts. (more…)

So with Swisher’s trade to the White Sox, the first thing I wanted to check was neutralizing his stats to the 2007 Chicago White Sox:

 Year Ag   G    AB    R    H   2B  3B   HR  RBI   BB   SO   SB   Avg   OBP   SLG   OPS   RC  ActG
+-------+----+-----+----+----+----+---+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+
 2004 23   20    61   11   16    4   0    2    8    9   11    0  .262  .370  .426  .796    9   20
 2005 24  131   467   70  114   33   1   22   78   58  110    0  .244  .332  .460  .792   70  131
 2006 25  157   564  112  149   25   2   37  101  103  152    1  .264  .385  .512  .897  109  157
 2007 26  150   552   94  154   39   1   24   87  109  131    3  .279  .402  .484  .886  106  150
+-------+----+-----+----+----+----+---+----+----+----+----+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----+----+
 Totals   458  1644  287  433  101   4   85  274  279  404    4  .263  .376  .485  .861  294  458

It makes a big difference. He real numbers in 2007 were .262/.381/.455, giving him an .836 OPS. The adjusted numbers above suggest an .886 OPS, a 50-point bump.

Also, according to his splits, he killed the White Sox in 2007, with an OPS over 1.000.

I thought I’d show you some of the cool data you can get with the PI Batting Splits.

As any huge Mattingly fan would know, he was well known for rarely swinging at the first pitch of an at-bat.
From his splits page, we can see the breakdown of data for career plate appearances by pitch count:

I Split          G   GS    PA    AB    R    H   2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB  IBB  SO  HBP  SH  SF ROE GDP  SB   CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  BAbip tOPS+ Split
+-+————+—-+—-+—–+—–+—-+—-+—+—+—+—-+—-+—+—-+—+—+—+—+—+—-+—+—–+—–+—–+—–+—–+—–+————+
   First Pitch   385        465   444       161  26   0  10   88    0   0    0   7   0  14   3  18           .363  .361  .489  .850  .337   105 First Pitch
   1-0 Count     467        564   560       167  31   4  13   89    0   0    0   0   0   4   5  26           .298  .296  .438  .734  .279    76 1-0 Count
   2-0 Count     227        262   257        87  22   1  12   55    0   0    0   0   0   5   3   7           .339  .332  .572  .904  .300   114 2-0 Count
   3-0 Count     175        187     5         1   0   0   0    7  181  86    0   0   0   1   0   0           .200  .973  .200 1.173  .167   214 3-0 Count
   0-1 Count     444        548   543       157  27   0  15   69    0   0    0   1   0   4   8  18           .289  .288  .422  .710  .267    70 0-1 Count
   1-1 Count     479        598   588       192  41   1  15   89    0   0    0   0   0  10   7  14           .327  .321  .476  .797  .304    91 1-1 Count
   2-1 Count     294        346   342       115  19   0   8   48    0   0    0   3   0   1   4   8           .336  .341  .462  .803  .319    93 2-1 Count
   3-1 Count     198        211   115        33   5   1   4   20   94   2    0   0   0   2   2   3           .287  .602  .452 1.054  .257   164 3-1 Count
   0-2 Count     202        218   215        45   5   0   2   10    0   0   40   1   0   2   3   7           .209  .211  .260  .471  .246    14 0-2 Count
   1-2 Count     413        500   496       114  27   0   7   45    0   0  121   2   0   2   4   8           .230  .232  .327  .559  .289    34 1-2 Count
   2-2 Count     338        384   381        86  27   0   4   27    0   0   69   0   0   3   5   2           .226  .224  .328  .552  .264    32 2-2 Count

Note that this data is for only 1988 to 1995, as the data is not available from before that. So, as you can see, of Mattingly’s 4643 career PAs from 1988 to 1995, 465 of them (10.0%) ended on the first pitch. Since he had only 444 first-pitch at-bats, we see that 21 were something else, and it turns out they were 7 hit-by-pitches and 14 sacrifice flies.

Firstly, I wanted to see whether Mattingly really did swing at the first pitch rarely. The batter he is most similar to is Cecil Cooper, but unfortunately almost all of Cooper’s career came before B-R’s detailed pitch data. However, we can take a look at the second most-similar batter, Wally Joyner.

From Joyner’s splits, you can see that he had 6788 PAs from 1988-2001 and of those, he had 1015 that ended after the first pitch. That’s 15.0%, as compared to 10.0% for Mattingly.

One more quickie: similar batter #5 is Garrett Anderson, whose entire career has pitch-by-pitch data. Anderson has 7887 career PAs, and 1191 ended after the first pitch. That’s 15.1%, very close to Joyner.

Obviously this is by no means a detailed study, but initial data does back up the idea that Mattingly did indeed look at a lot of first pitches.

Take a look above at Mattingly’s 3-0 count PAs. Of 187 such PAs, only 5 ever became official at-bats, and one became a hit. So he had a .200 BA with 3 balls an no strikes, but a .973 OBP thanks to 181 walks. (Again, this is 1988 to 1995, and keep in mind that this is for PAs that ended on a 3-0 count. It doesn’t include PAs where the next pitch was a strike.)

To see everything that happened once the count got to 3-0 on Mattingly, you need to look a little further down.

I Split          G   GS    PA    AB    R    H   2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB  IBB  SO  HBP  SH  SF ROE GDP  SB   CS   BA   OBP   SLG   OPS  BAbip tOPS+ Split
+-+————+—-+—-+—–+—–+—-+—-+—+—+—+—-+—-+—+—-+—+—+—+—+—+—-+—+—–+—–+—–+—–+—–+—–+————+
   After 1-0     987       2337  1990       606 131   6  50  301  321  86   96   2   0  24  23  52           .305  .398  .452  .850  .298   107 After 1-0
   After 2-0     600        866   585       191  43   2  20  108  269  86   31   2   0  10   8   9           .326  .533  .509 1.042  .314   157 After 2-0
   After 3-0     282        321    86        31   5   0   3   21  232  86    9   0   0   3   2   1           .360  .819  .523 1.342  .364   240 After 3-0
   After 0-1     932       1798  1740       456  86   1  38  189   41   2  165   5   0  12  21  45           .262  .279  .378  .657  .270    58 After 0-1
   After 1-1     899       1634  1530       437  96   1  34  193   86   2  120   3   0  15  18  34           .286  .322  .416  .738  .290    78 After 1-1
   After 2-1     571        802   695       201  42   1  17   90   99   2   48   3   0   5   7  12           .289  .378  .426  .804  .290    96 After 2-1
   After 3-1     287        326   196        59  11   1   7   30  127   2   13   0   0   3   4   4           .301  .571  .474 1.045  .291   160 After 3-1
   After 0-2     430        523   512       110  20   0   6   31    7   0  110   1   0   3   5  10           .215  .226  .289  .515  .261    24 After 0-2
   After 1-2     607        822   786       182  44   0  11   67   31   0  164   2   0   3   9  12           .232  .262  .330  .592  .279    43 After 1-2
   After 2-2     468        586   528       125  34   0   9   48   54   0   87   0   0   4   6   5           .237  .305  .352  .657  .266    60 After 2-2
   Three Balls   523        715   348        99  18   1  12   58  362  88   31   0   0   5   5   7           .284  .645  .445 1.090  .281   175 Three Balls
   Two Strikes   837       1419  1320       310  72   0  21  113   87   0  261   3   0   9  15  21           .235  .282  .337  .619  .276    50 Two Strikes

So after the 321 PAs that went 3-0, Mattingly ended up with an official at-bat 86 times (26.8%). All the rest of the time he walked. That’s a .320 batting average with an .819 OBP.

Compare that to Joyner who had 452 PAs with the count 3-0, and then went on to have 152 ABs (33.6%) So Joyner took fewer walks, and also managed a lower BA (.309) and OBP (.761.) Anderson, to date, has had 330 PAs with a 3-0 count, and 117 ABs (35.4%), with a .291 BA and .745 OBP.

These arguments seem to be in favor of Mattingly, although some argue that for years he was the Yankees’ best hitter and maybe would have been better off swinging more with 3-0 counts rather than walking and leaving it up to a lesser hitter, such as an over-the-hill Jack Clark. (I have heard a similar criticism made of Wade Boggs.)

On another post, kingturtle remarked that Sid Fernandez was incredibly effective in his career until the 5th of 6th inning of starts. I remember hearing that something about Fernandez’ windup or delivery made it tough for batters to pick up the ball, and that they usually needed a couple of at-bats in a game against Fernandez to get accustomed to it.

An easy way to look at that is to check out Fernandez’ pitching splits, specifically his average against based on the number of times he has faced a guy in a game. For his career, guys facing him for the first time in a game hit .186 / .264 / .308 against him, whereas the batting average climbed to .204 in the second PA, and .246 in the 3rd or greater PA.

To me, these numbers back up kingturtle exactly. 5th or 6th inning would usually mean 2 PAs by most players, and Fernandez allowed a combined .194 batting average over the first 2 PAs by each player.

If you break it out by years, from 1985 to 1993, batters were collectively under .200 every single year in their first PA against Fernandez. Wow!

That being said, one important factor is that Fernandez’ career batting average against is just .209 and he is third all-time in fewest hits allowed per 9 innings.

But compare him to pitchers most statistically similar:

Jose Rijo allowed a .243 average in his career, broken out as .239 in the first PA, .254 in the second PA, and .236 in the third+ PA. Certainly quite a different breakdown from Fernandez.

Bob Ojeda allowed a .257 average in his career. It was .250 in the first PA, .253 in the second PA, and .272 in the third+ PA. This is a similar trend to Fernandez, but the numbers split across PA# are all closer to the average for Ojeda.

Gary Peters allowed a .243 average in his career. It was .233 in PA #1, .238 in PA #2, and .258 in PA #3+. This is somewhat closer to Fernandez’ model.

I remember that Fernandez was a notorious fly-ball pitcher and he did allow more homers on average. But I guess he allowed many fewer singles!

So, I went back and calculated triples by LHB and RHB for a bunch of years. Click through for lots of analysis. (more…)

A reader asked about the incidence of doubles of triples, broken down by whether the batters hit lefty or right.

Looking at 2007, that info is available on the ML Batting Splits page.

In 99448 AB, right-handed batters hit 5458 doubles and 426 triples.

In 68335 AB, left-handed batters hit 3739 doubles and 512 triples.

Right away, you can see that LHB hit triples at a much higher rate, given that they hit more triples in fewer at-bats. Normalizing by number of at-bats, here’s the comparison:

For doubles, RHB hit 1 per 18.22 at-bats, where as LHB hit 1 per 18.28 at-bats. For all intents are purposes, that’s absolutely identical. If there were a team of all lefties versus a team of all righties, the team of lefties would hit about 1 more double over the course of an entire season.

For triples, it’s a different story. RHB hit 1 per 233.4 AB, whereas LHB hit 1 per 133.5 AB. That’s a huge difference. Again comparing mythical teams of all lefties vs all righties, the lefty team would hit about 20 more triples per year.

Interestingly, RHB and LHB had virtually identical batting averages, with RHB hitting .2677 for the year and LHB hitting .2685 for the year. Looking just at singles, RHB hit 17,783 in 99,448 ABs and LHB hit 12,102 in 68,335 ABs. That 1 single per 5.59 ABs for righties, and 1 single per 5.65 ABs for lefties. That’d be a difference of just 11 singles over a year for a team of righties over a team of lefties.

For homers, righties has 2956, or 1 per 33.6 ABs. Lefties managed 2001, or 1 per 34.2 ABs. Over the course of a season, a team of righties would hit 3 more homers in a season as compared to a team of lefties.

So, lefties hit more singles and triples, whereas righties hit more doubles and homers. However, it’s only the difference in triples that’s very significant.

As a reader asked for, here are the longest streaks for reaching base at least once per game, broken down by position.

(more…)

Resident suggestion guru kingturtle asked about which players had the largest differential between RBI and runs in a season. There is no straightforward way to calculate the leaders for this, so I thought I’d break it down by total number of RBI. (more…)

OK, here is part two of yesterday’s post. (more…)