May 8, 2015

BP Unfiltered

Everything You Could Have Learned This Week, 5/8/15

by Ian Frazer

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I walked out of my last college class yesterday. Since I'm now basically finished with higher education, I don't plan on reading or writing ever again. So this week's articles were dictated to me by my computer's text-to-speech software, and I had my mother type up this post. Thanks mom, love ya!

In both the up-to-down and down-to-up cases, switching levels has been effective after either a ball or a strike, but not both, and not effective enough to offset the ineffectiveness of switching levels in the other case. Again, this is somewhat intuitive. If a batter has a weakness (or a pitcher has a strength) up or down in the zone, it would make sense that continuing to pitch to that level is more effective than switching away from it, assuming that pitchers are starting off by attacking the more desirable location on the first pitch.

I’m hesitant to say anything definitively, but it sure seems as though there’s something going on here. This isn’t merely an an instance of Z-Contact% acting as a proxy for a hitter’s strikeout rate, either. There’s almost no correlation between a hitter’s Triple-A strikeout rate and his wOBA differential.

Another interesting wrinkle is that Z-Contact% is better correlated with a hitter’s transition than plain old Contact%. My guess is that this is because Z-Contact% acts as a better proxy for a hitter’s bat-to-ball ability. Contact%, on the other hand, is influenced by a hitter’s plate discipline. Pitches outside of the strike zone are harder to hit, so players who swing at more of those pitches will have lower contact rates. Only looking at pitches in the zone does a better job of getting at a hitter’s actual contact skills.

Not counting the designated hitter, American League teams pay their four bench players an average of $1.8 million. Without the designated hitter, National League teams pay their five bench players an average of $2 million. Interleague play does constitute a small portion of the season, and NL teams still invest some money on a bat coming off the bench. This amounts to a $45 million difference between the leagues spent on the bench. Combining the salaries of the MLB bench as well as the designated hitters, the American League currently pays around $80 million more than the National League. That number is more likely representative of the amount the players stand to gain through the use of the designated hitter in both leagues. Increased competition for sluggers could drive costs up somewhat, although the stereotypical designated hitter is not all that prevalent in today’s game. The amount is not nothing, but when the players are dealing with a $1 billion gap to get to 50% of revenues, getting 8% of that amount is a minor victory and should not be considered a major concession by the owners.

Adding an additional roster spot is another potential salary gain for the players. The 25-man roster has been in place for nearly a century, but it is hardly sacred. Following strikes, teams were allowed extra spots. Teams are currently allowed an extra player for doubleheaders, and the owners had no problems reducing the roster to 24 players in the 1980s as a way to reduce their own costs. With an average salary of $4.3 million, an additional roster spot, in theory, gains the players around $130 million, but this number is illusory. The extra roster spot does not go to a starter, but to a bench player or bullpen spot. The average bench player or non-closer in the bullpen makes just $1.8 million. The added roster spot will go to one of these players and create just $54 million in additional salaries.

Let’s look [at] a couple of players with fairly similar fly ball exit speed portfolios. Austin Jackson had an average fly ball exit of speed of 83.5 MPH in 2014, just above the AL average of 83.2 MPH. 17.3% of his fly balls were hit at 92.5 MPH and higher. Jackson’s overall fly ball production was very low, however, at .195 AVG-.398 SLG.Brian Dozier‘s average fly ball velocity was slightly higher, but still squarely in the average range, at 84.9 MPH. 24.3% of his fly balls were hit at 92.5 MPH or higher, and his fly ball production was markedly higher at .243 AVG-.764 SLG.

Why was there such a huge difference in these two players’ fly ball production? Jackson only pulled three of those 92.5+ MPH fly balls to the LF field sector, while Dozier pulled a whopping 22. Now does this make Dozier a better hitter than Jackson? Not necessarily; Dozier does have an excessive ground ball pulling issue that creates problems of its own. He is certainly better at selectively pulling in the air than Jackson, however.

Over half of Jackson’s hard fly balls were hit to CF, RCF and RF, and weren’t hit hard enough to do much damage. Fully three quarters of Dozier’s were hit to LF and LCF, and did plenty of harm to opposing pitchers. Jackson actually hit significantly more 97.5+ MPH flies compared to Dozier, a 9 to 3 margin, but hit 7 of them to the middle three field sectors, while Dozier focused on the extreme pull side. Exit speed is indeed only a piece of the puzzle.