November 21, 2009
Order Now The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2010 is now in development and will ship in mid November! This year's book will feature articles by THT's staff as well as Bill James, Tom Tango and Craig Wright. If you use this link to purchase the Annual, you will be in the first group to receive it and you'll be supporting THT. 
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John Barten Brian Borawski Craig Brown Evan Brunell David Gassko Jonathan Hale Brandon Isleib Chris Jaffe Max Marchi Bruce Markusen Harry Pavlidis Jeff Sackmann Dave Studeman Steve Treder Bryan Tsao Tuck! Dan Turkenkopf Colin Wyers Geoff Young John Brattain And here's the full roster.
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A pitch is a terrible thing to waste. Or is it? (Part 1)by Dan TurkenkopfApril 24, 2009 In many ways the mind game between batter and pitcher represents the core of baseball. Yes, the pitcher has eight men behind him who can and will make the difference between a hit and an out, often spectacularly. But the heart of the game is the confrontation between the man on the mound and the man at the plate. Many other researchers have examined various aspects of the struggle—from pitch sequencing, to pitch location, to the game theory aspects of a 3-2 count. I'd like to focus on a different situation—one of baseball's cliches— that a pitcher should waste a pitch when he has the batter in the hole at 0-2. The proper approach in the 0-2 situation is something of a debate. Many guides to youth baseball (and therefore youth baseball coaches) appear to teach that the pitcher should avoid the strike zone with an 0-2 count; perhaps hoping the batter will chase, but at least setting up the next pitch. That stance does not necessarily follow players up the chain to higher levels of play. Joe Posnanski illustrates two opinions (although he doesn't really discuss wasting a pitch).
Part 1 of this series will identify the situations in which pitchers choose to waste a pitch. Part 2 will study whether wasting a pitch is a good idea. The methodologyDiving right in, what do we mean when we talk about "wasting a pitch?" Traditionally, it means throwing a pitch far enough out of the strike zone that the batter can't put it into play, and using it to somehow set up the next pitch. This can take the form of forcing the batter to change his eye level (going high, then coming back with a pitch down), backing him off the plate before throwing a back-door breaking ball, or allowing him to gauge the fastball speed and then getting him out in front of a change-up. How far out of the strike zone does a pitch need to be before we considered it wasted? That's not an easily answered question. It can't be determined based on how a batter performs on the pitch for two major reasons. First, these pitches tend to be balls, so the sample size of actual outcomes is very small. Second, the balls that are put in play are likely hit by free swingers, introducing a selection bias into the mix. If using results is out, we're pretty much left with location as our only option for classifying a pitch as wasted. For lack of a better definition (and with some advice from PITCHf/x guru Harry Pavlidis), I decided to use a zone that extended roughly 16 inches above and below the strike zone, 16 inches wide, and 14 inches tight. Any pitch inside that zone was considered good. Any pitch outside that zone was wasted. Since the actual strike zone differs slightly for right-handed and left-handed batters, the waste zone is slightly different as well. Waste Zone for a RHB  Waste Zone for a LHB  There were 38,606 pitches thrown at an 0-2 count in 2008. Of those, 4,297, or roughly 11 percent, were wasted according to this definition. By qualityDo certain pitchers waste more pitches than others? Are pitchers more likely to waste a pitch to a good hitter than a bad hitter? There is basically no difference in FIP between pitchers who waste pitches and those who don't. The FIP for wasting pitchers was 4.29, while non-wasting pitchers had a 4.28 FIP. On the other hand, we can see a slight difference in batter quality. As an aggregate, batters who reached an 0-2 count were slightly below average. The weighted average wOBA for such batters was .333 (for the entire season, not for the 0-2 count) compared to an average of .335 for all batters. This isn't too surprising, as you'd expect weaker hitters to get to an 0-2 count more often than good hitters. If we remove pitchers from the equation, the remaining batters had a .337 wOBA compared to a .339 league mark. Batters who saw wasted pitches had a .333 wOBA for the season, while batters who were pitched straight up had a .329 wOBA. That suggests that pitchers were more likely to waste a pitch with a better batter at the plate. Most of the effect appears to be related to pitchers at the plate. Because of their relative ineptitude at the dish, there's very little reason not to challenge them each and every pitch. If we remove pitchers from our sample, the gap shrinks to .338-.337; or basically even. By handWhat about handedness of the batter or pitcher? Do certain match-ups lead to more wasted pitches? And where are those pitches thrown? There was no difference when looking at the handedness of pitchers or batters. No matter how the data were sliced, the waste rate was always just about 11 percent. By examining where the pitches were thrown, we can get some idea of the intent of the wasted pitch. RH Batter and RH Pitcher  RH Batter and LH Pitcher  LH Batter and RH Pitcher  LH Batter and LH Pitcher  Pitchers tended to waste pitches along a diagonal. Right-handed pitchers missed high and to the left side of the plate, or low and to the right side of the plate. Left handers were just the opposite. I would guess that the high pitches tended to be fastballs, while the low ones were some sort of breaking pitch. The locations seem to suggest that pitchers are looking for batters to chase the ball rather than using the waste pitch to set up the next pitch. By base/outsAre pitchers more likely to waste pitches at certain times? Does it matter how many outs there are or who's on base? The number of outs in the inning appears to have no effect on a pitcher's willingness to waste a pitch. The waste rate stayed at 11 percent in all cases.
The base state, on the other hand, showed major fluctuation in waste rate.
Pitchers were least likely to waste a pitch with a runner on first base. With a runner on at first, pitchers wasted only 8 percent of their pitches. With runners on first and second, the waste rate skyrocketed to 14 percent. One possible explanation is that pitchers want batters to put the ball in play with a runner on first to get a double play, while with runners on first and second a strikeout becomes much more valuable. For the sake of completeness, here's the full breakdown by base/out state. No outs
One out
Two out
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| Balls Strikes | Wasted | Not Wasted | % Wasted | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 4020 | 170652 | 0.02 |
| 0 | 1 | 3437 | 79018 | 0.04 |
| 0 | 2 | 4304 | 34383 | 0.11 |
| 1 | 0 | 1383 | 70157 | 0.02 |
| 1 | 1 | 2001 | 66415 | 0.03 |
| 1 | 2 | 4196 | 55008 | 0.07 |
| 2 | 0 | 337 | 24507 | 0.01 |
| 2 | 1 | 561 | 36304 | 0.02 |
| 2 | 2 | 2060 | 49218 | 0.04 |
| 3 | 0 | 85 | 7700 | 0.01 |
| 3 | 1 | 167 | 15443 | 0.01 |
| 3 | 2 | 567 | 30381 | 0.02 |
