Sunday, August 21, 2011

Where Can Pitchers Improve?


After reading what I had to say about young pitchers and future success, T.J. made a good point that I hadn't considered:
I think on BBHQ Radio they mentioned, and this makes perfect sense and is borne out by your study, that a pitcher can't "learn" to strike out more guys, but he CAN learn to walk fewer. 
This made me curious. Do control artists start out with good control or do they learn it?

Top 10 2007-2011 BB/9 Pitchers (min 300 IP as a SP)
Pitcher
K/9
BB/9
HR/9
K/9 R
BB/9 R
HR/9 R

4.64
1.26
0.80
5.84
4.28
0.98

7.45
1.38
0.69
4.94
4.76
1.15

6.86
1.49
1.42
6.35
1.49
2.16

7.48
1.59
0.73
7.57
3.44
1.20

4.02
1.63
1.36
5.98
4.05
1.35

6.20
1.70
0.80
5.34
2.16
0.72

5.06
1.72
1.01
5.55
2.87
1.20

8.17
1.75
0.95
5.33
2.72
1.11

4.77
1.80
0.94
6.69
2.51
0.24

5.10
1.82
0.74
5.31
2.21
1.62


Wow, what an eclectic list of pitchers, to say the least. But it's a group where, for the most part, the BB/9 did improve as these pitchers went along. In the cases of Byrd, Halladay and Maddux, I don't think that each one of them would have become the pitcher that he did without this happening.

What jumps out at me, though, is how for the future or possible Hall of Famers on this list, the K/9 improved as well.

Maddux: Struck out over 6.5 per nine between 1991-2001 nine times in 11 years.
Halladay: Since 2008, Halladay has whiffed 7.54, 7.83, 7.86 and 8.63 batters per nine.
Mussina: Struck out between 7.11 and 8.73 batters per nine between 1996 and 2006.

I didn't hear the broadcast that T.J. is referencing above, but it does seem to me that pitchers can feasibly improve in all of the categories they can control...and particularly both in K/9 and BB/9.

2 comments:

Ryan G said...

Surely some non-zero amount of the improvement in K/9 and BB/9 in elite pitchers comes from getting the benefit of the doubt on more borderline calls as their careers advance.

Mike Gianella said...

Possible, though I can't imagine how you'd prove it. A good portion of the baseball watching population who try to use Pitch Fx to prove bad umpiring are wrong because they don't know how to read the graphs.