What Can Ground Balls Do For You?

In 2007, Jake Peavy was rewarded with his first Cy Young award as a 19 time game winner, while pitching most of his games in pitcher friendly Petco Park. His progression from one of the best best power pitching prospects in baseball, to one of the best pitchers in all of baseball seemed to have started in 2005. But, after the impressive 2005 season, his 2006 season was slightly a disappointment. But, fantasy owners who showed him the faith got to witness a Tom Seaver like season. With the 19 wins, an ERA of 2.54, a WHIP at 1.06, strikeout rate of 9.67 per 9 innings (which amounted to 240 Ks), these pitching numbers were the equivalent of a hitter winning the triple crown.

One thing I thought is interesting about Peavy, is he is a balanced flyball/ ground ball pitcher.

Name	GB	BABIP	TB	BB	HR	SO/9	DIPS	ERA	WHIP	TEAM DER
Peavy	254	.266	253	68	13	9.67	2.76	2.54	1.06	.7125 (6th)

For example, his teammate Chris Young who had a real nice season in 2007 had only 131 ground balls (GB) on the season, where as two other very good pitchers in Brandon Webb and Hudson had over 400 ground balls on the season.

Name	GB	BABIP	TB	BB	HR	SO/9	DIPS	ERA	WHIP	TEAM DER
Hudson	441	.281	298	53	10	5.30	3.40	3.33	1.22	.7188 (7th)
Webb	431	.277	295	72	12	7.39	3.18	3.01	1.19	.7066(10th)
Lowe	398	.278	293	59	20	6.64	3.89	3.88	1.27	.6991 (16th)
Oswalt	361	.300	324	60	14	6.54	3.51	3.18	1.33	.6997(15th)
Maddux	359	.297	326	25	14	4.73	3.55	4.14	1.24	.7125(6th)

The balls that are put in play on the ground are much harder to turn an out with than fly balls are as indicated by higher BABIP.

Name	GB	BABIP	TB	BB	HR	SO/9	DIPS	ERA	WHIP	TEAM DER
James, C	157	.264	295	58	32	6.47	5.19	4.24	1.38	.7188 (7th)
Young, C	131	.235	183	72	10	8.69	3.43	3.12	1.10	.7125 (6th)

With Ground ball pitchers, the success the pitcher exhibits depends highly on the defense. Where as, fly balls are easier to make an out with. If a pitcher that is balanced like Peavy, he gets the benefits of getting the easier outs with the fly balls, and have the infield defense to help you out on the ground balls. A stat that measures this is Defensive Efficiency Ratio (DER ) :

measures the percentage of times balls in play are turned into outs by the team’s fielders, not including homeruns. There are different versions of the formula for DER but one most commonly used is (BFP-H-K-BB-HBP-0.6*E)/(BFP-HR-K-BB-HBP) where BFP = batters faced pitcher, H=hits allowed, K=strikeouts, BB=walks allowed, HBP=hits batsmen and E=errors

Thus, for these ground ball pitchers in 2007, How did their defense help them is worth taking a look at.

Projection	GB	BABIP	TEAM DER
Hudson	441	.281	.7188 (7th)
Webb	431	.277	.7066(10th)
Lowe	398	.278	.6991 (16th)
Oswalt	361	.300	.6997(15th)
Maddux	359	.297	.7125(6th)

So, all these pitchers with the high number of ground balls, are backed with defenses that are good at making outs when the ball gets in play. Take some of these pitchers, and place them with a bad defense, it would be interesting how there numbers would turn out.

One last thing I decided to do was take a look at the Range of the infielders involved in these good ground ball pitchers. I used Dave Pinto’s PMR:

uses play-by-play data to determine the probability of a ball in play being converted to an out based on six parameters: Direction of hit (a vector), The type of hit (Fly, ground, line drive, bunt), How hard the ball was hit (slow, medium, hard), The park, The handedness of the pitcher, The handedness of the batter.

Arizona (99.87 19th)

C	1B	2B	SS	3B
96.26 (24th)	99.98 (14th)	104.12 (4th)	100.82 (11th)	94.61 (28th)

Braves (100.66 10th)

C	1B	2B	SS	3B
115.67(2nd)	104.28(7th)	97.70 (22nd)	99.22 (17th)	99.90 (15th)

San Diego (100.08 17th)

C	1B	2B	SS	3B
95.97 (25th)	105.21 (5th)	96.61 (27th)	98.44(22nd)	98.37 (18th)

Los Angeles (99.87 20th)

C	1B	2B	SS	3B
108.91 (5th)	97.07 (19th)	96.99 (25th)	105.60 (3rd)	100.85 (14th)

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Third Baseball Blog Blast

This is the third in the series of the baseball bloggers who have had a great impact on the vibrant baseball blogosphere that you see on the web today. In the first installment , Aaron Gleeman was profiled, the second was Rich Lederer. Now, on to the story of baseball blogger David Pinto.

One site that is one everybody’s blogroll (including Peter Gammons) is Baseball Musings by David Pinto. His claim to fame is that during the 2001 season he was part of ESPN‘s Baseball Tonight Online. He was a moderator on the chat room that featured either Rob Dibble or Tom Candiotti answering question. His original Baseball Musings blog was one that resembled his blog today, where he covers baseball news 24/7. He has written articles for Baseball Prospectus, and now also is listed as a baseball expert at SportingNews.com .

One thing that is significant about his Baseball Musings site is David’s jump into baseball statistics. He created PMR

Pinto uses play-by-play data to determine the probability of a ball in play being converted to an out based on six parameters: Direction of hit (a vector), The type of hit (Fly, ground, line drive, bunt), How hard the ball was hit (slow, medium, hard), The park, The handedness of the pitcher, The handedness of the batter.

2007 Team PMR

2007 P PMR

2007 C PMR

2007 1B PMR

2007 2B PMR

2007 3B PMR

2007 SS PMR

2007 CF PMR

2007 RF PMR

2007 LF PMR

Also, included on his site is the day to day Batter / Pitcher database where you can get game by game performance history over a distinct period for majpr league player.

The first stop on checking what the buzz of the blogosphere, Pinto also is one of the nice guys in the baseball space. He answers emails and is one to contact to get the word out on something new in the blogosphere.

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