I’ve been out of the baseball loop, focusing on my basketball project. But I still slavishly read Bill James’s site, and he brought up a point relevant to my research on pitcher types. In answering a question about Brandon Webb, Bill said:
I’ve said it a thousand times, but. . .I don’t believe in ground ball pitchers. I don’t trust them, I don’t want them, and I don’t believe one should ever invest money in them. In theory, a ground ball pitcher with a good strikeout rate is the best of both worlds. But the problem is, there just aren’t any pitchers like that who are consistently good; they all either get hurt or they lose home plate. The only pitcher like that who has had a great career in the last 30 years was Kevin Brown. The overwhelming majority of the consistently good pitchers are the guys who live off of the high fastball—Clemens, Schilling, the Unit, Pedro, Santana, King Felix, Verlander, Sabathia, etc.
When I left off my baseball research, I left off with a classification of pitchers by the type of pitches that they throw. Dave Allen pointed out that I should look at pitchers who throw two-seam fastballs, as those pitchers have become the subject of much sabermetric discussion. Two-seam fastballs induce ground balls like no other pitch, and the value of ground balls for pitchers has become a hotly debated topic. (By hot, I mean that multiple analysts are competing to show how much value ground balls really have for pitchers.)
I created a new category of pitchers, centered around those that throw a high percentage of two-seam fastballs. Indeed, this category of pitchers had very high ground ball rates (something like 6% higher than average), but also lower strikeout rates (about 0.5 K/9 less than average). I was going to write an article about whether or not this “tradeoff” is worth it.
But Bill James brings up a better point. Who are the great two-seam fastball ground ball pitchers out there?
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1. xdog Posted: August 25, 2010 at 12:21 PM (#3625114)Looking at the all-time career WAR leaderboard for pitchers, Maddux. Reuschel. John.
Sure, Reuschel and John aren't great pitchers in the conventional sense of the word, but they were very, very good for a long time. Reuschel won 214 games with a career ERA+ of 114, John 288 and 111.
But isn't this something we already knew? If you have less strikeouts and more balls in play, you'll give up more hits and runs and have more variance in your results? Doesn't this just restate what DIPS has been telling us?
Not sure that injuries can be attributed to throwing a 2 seamer or sinker, which is a pretty benign pitch. The quoted passage doesnt exactly claim that, but I dont also see where a "groundball" pitcher would be any more likely than another pitcher to get hurt. Less likely even (despite the Webb counterexample) because the groundball pitchers tend to throw 2 seamers or sinkers for a majority of their pitches (Lowe, Pelfrey, Webb, etc), which is probablly much less strain on the arm than throwing a true junk pitch in 10-20% of pitches.
They might have less control, maybe. A 2 seamer has more movement than a 4 seam FB so its inherently more difficult to locate. I'm not buying that though. Getting to the majors is a natural selection process for control much more so than it is for pitch type. If you get guys out it doesnt matter what pitch you throw. If you cant control your pitches, you're not likely to make it in the first place. You will, however, get more looks if you have a power arm.
I had, at times, thought something tangentially related. Unfortunately I never sat down to see if it was actually true or not.
In terms of consistency, I'd take someone who lives off a 2 seamer or sinker over someone who lives off a curveball. If you are talking consistency, how many pitchers are able to throw a 12-6 CB or any slower breaking pitch consistently over a career. Guy like Barry Zito springs immediately to mind.
Its a bit disingenous to leave Maddux out of a discussion like this, or to say that Brown was the only example in the last 30 years.
Also, I wouldnt really count Pedro or Santana as guys who "live off the high fastball".
And Halladay comes to mind as another guy who lives off location, not the high fastball, and induces his share of groundballs.
"A bit"??!?
1.20 GB/FB for his career, against a league average of 0.78 for that period.
Does this hold true for times in the past where there were many good pitchers who struck people out at only a quarter or third of the rate of good pitchers today. Did elite pitchers in the 30's-50's have greater performance variance than elite pitchers today?
Could you please source this? That sounds low (though how we count LD affects things).
B-R. For Halladay, it's available here. The description indicates it includes line drives as fly balls.
The original question posed by Bezdomny was
James's response was
A response to James's comment was
James's response to that was
It looks that way to me.
1. I dont want groundball pitchers
2. What about these 5 groundball pitchers?
3. They arent true groundball pitchers
If a "groundball pitcher" to James means either Webb or Wang, then he doesnt have to worry about having one very often, because those are some pretty big outliers (although Lowe has been pretty close to Webb in GB/FB).
Season IP ERA2003 180.2 2.84
2004 208.0 3.59
2005 229.0 3.54
2006 235.0 3.10
2007 236.1 3.01
2008 226.2 3.30
2009 4.0 13.50
That's pretty good work by him.
BB-ref doesn't consider him an active player?? Well, if he were an active player he would be tied for 8th in career shutouts (with 8).
Brown 1.46, 6.6
Carpenter 1.01, 6.9
Halladay 1.20, 6.7
Hernandez 1.28, 8.1
Hudson 1.44, 6.0
Lowe 1.66, 5.8
Maddux 1.28, 6.1
Oswalt 0.93, 7.4
Pettitte (LH) 0.98, 6.6
Wainwright 0.99, 2.8
Wang 1.51, 4.2
Webb 1.82, 7.3
Webb was one of my favorite pitchers in the game to watch pitch, prior to his abrupt disappearance.
Such an outlier, and so damn good at what he did. He is to the sinker what Mariano Rivera is to the cutter.
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