Monday, November 23, 2009
Greinke and fly balls
Posted by Mike FastIn God we trust. All others bring data. -W. Edwards Deming
Along with Zack Greinke's 2009 American League Cy Young Award came a widely-circulated article by Tyler Kepner in the New York Times. In the article, Brian Bannister is quoted, "So a lot of times, Zack would pitch for a fly ball at our park instead of a ground ball, just because the zone rating was better in our outfield and it was a big park."
There's quite a bit to digest in Kepner's article besides that one excerpt from Bannister, but it was one piece that I thought would be easy to check. What did I find?
Road Home Bunt 5% 2% Fly 30% 33% Ground 36% 41% Liner 21% 16% Popup 8% 8%The batted ball type comes from the MLB Gameday data. The results don't really line up with what Bannister what saying. It may be that Greinke was pitching for more fly balls at home but not necessarily getting them, but that's a question for another day.
Update: Here's the batted ball log by game.
Date Park Fly Ground LD Pop Bunt 4/8 cha 0 8 2 1 1 4/13 kca 3 4 5 0 0 4/18 tex 6 9 7 1 1 4/24 kca 4 9 3 1 2 4/29 kca 9 6 2 1 0 5/4 kca 7 8 2 4 0 5/9 ana 10 9 2 0 2 5/15 kca 8 7 5 1 0 5/21 kca 5 8 2 1 1 5/26 kca 3 13 3 3 0 5/31 kca 7 11 2 1 0 6/5 tor 11 3 6 2 0 6/11 cle 3 8 5 2 3 6/17 kca 11 7 1 0 1 6/23 hou 6 14 3 0 3 6/28 pit 4 4 8 4 1 7/3 kca 5 9 3 2 0 7/8 det 7 6 2 0 1 7/14 sln 0 0 0 1 0 7/18 kca 4 11 2 3 0 7/24 kca 3 10 1 1 0 7/29 bal 6 3 4 3 0 8/3 tba 1 8 4 0 2 8/8 kca 6 8 5 3 0 8/14 det 6 4 5 3 0 8/19 cha 7 5 4 3 0 8/25 kca 7 4 1 1 0 8/30 sea 9 9 2 3 0 9/5 kca 9 4 8 1 1 9/11 cle 6 9 2 1 0 9/17 det 1 3 5 0 0 9/22 kca 8 3 2 2 0 9/27 kca 6 8 5 0 0 10/3 min 7 7 3 0 1
Mike Fast is a Royals fan who enjoys investigating baseball questions using data of many sorts. He is a member of Complete Game Consulting. He welcomes comments via e-mail.
Hold up… think of the context. If Greinke’s thinking about ballpark effects, then obviously he’ll be doing that for each stadium he pitches in. Can you show the game-by-game log for this data? Perhap there’s 33% flyballs on the road because he pitched in a significant number of “flyball stadiums”?
Although I also find it very interesting that there’s a the higher rate of grounders on the road & lower rate of liners. That could indicate that many liners were interpreted as flyballs by the road game stats guy. There can be a thin line when it comes to some line drives & flyballs, as far as I understand.
But