Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[Peter_Spaeth]

I thought a pitcher's BABIP could be indicative of his ability to induce weak contact and therefore having a higher one than typical could indicate he was not pitching as well as before and not just random bad luck.

Anyhow I guess his bad luck just disappeared the day he was sent to Houston and his BIP then dropped by over .3 for the rest of the season. Just regression to the mean, inconsequential.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I thought a pitcher's BABIP could be indicative of his ability to induce weak contact and therefore having a higher one than typical could indicate he was not pitching as well as before and not just random bad luck.

Anyhow I guess his bad luck just disappeared the day he was sent to Houston and his BIP then dropped by over .3 for the rest of the season. Just regression to the mean, inconsequential.

Yeah Peter, I vaguely seem to remember someone on here posting about how they used that same statistic to declare that Spahn was just lucky and not so great a pitcher. Good thing his luck didn't last for more than 363 wins or 20 or so successful winning seasons. Otherwise, people might actually begin to question the infallibility of such a statistical measure and the thoroughly conclusive answer that can be gleaned and ultimately drawn from it in regards to something as readily and objectively measurable as the level of Spahn's luck. But of course, we all know that a loss of faith in statistical infallibility would never happen, especially when such a conclusive and non-arguable determination of Spahn's luck is drawn from such totally unbiased and all-inclusive statistical and intangible data by qualified data scientists in their unrivaled capacity and knowledge, the results of which they so unselfishly bestow upon and honor us with. For without them, we, the unknowing minions, would truly be in the dark. But fortunately for us, we have our beloved statisticians and data scientists to instead smile down upon us with their sage and benevolent wisdom, and lead us unto the light! Amen.

(Shoot! Did I just cross a line and post something religious? If so, my apologies, no offense meant to anyone............well, almost! )

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I thought a pitcher's BABIP could be indicative of his ability to induce weak contact and therefore having a higher one than typical could indicate he was not pitching as well as before and not just random bad luck.

Anyhow I guess his bad luck just disappeared the day he was sent to Houston and his BIP then dropped by over .3 for the rest of the season. Just regression to the mean, inconsequential.

Yes, it did. This happens all the time. He even got lucky in Houston. His HR% was half of what it normally is for him during those 10 starts. Anything can happen in 11 starts. It's just way too small of a sample size. Hell, nearly anything can happen even over the course of a full season too, let alone 11 games.

A pitcher's BABIP is almost entirely outside of his control. There are some who suggest that they may be able to exercise some minuscule amount of control over it, to the tune of a few points, but that's not an easy sell even at that. Either way, large fluctuations above and below the league average BABIP is indicative of a pitcher having gotten either lucky or unlucky that season. Just go look up your favorite 10 pitchers and look at their best and worst seasons with respect to their ERAs and WHIPs. You'll usually find that those were usually just seasons where every bounce or wind gust went their way (or failed to when their numbers were "bad"). Especially when there is a discrepancy between their ERA and their FIP.

If I want to know how well a pitcher performed, I look at the stats that are within their control.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Your logic would mean there's no such thing as a great pitcher who pitches to contact, or who isn't a dominant strikeout pitcher, because once a batter puts a ball in play it's all just dumb luck. That just does not square with experience. Did you ever watch Greg Maddux pitch?

Put another way, putting a ball in play on a pitch that was a hanging curve or a fastball with no movement down the middle is just not the same as doing so on a wicked slider two inches off the plate. A great pitcher can throw more pitches that are difficult to make solid contact with and thus your chances of getting a hit off him on a ball you put into play is not just random or some stat that will eventually hit the mean.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Your logic would mean there's no such thing as a great pitcher who pitches to contact, or who isn't a dominant strikeout pitcher, because once a batter puts a ball in play it's all just dumb luck. That just does not square with experience. Did you ever watch Greg Maddux pitch?

Put another way, putting a ball in play on a pitch that was a hanging curve or a fastball with no movement down the middle is just not the same as doing so on a wicked slider two inches off the plate. A great pitcher can throw more pitches that are difficult to make solid contact with and thus your chances of getting a hit off him on a ball you put into play is not just random or some stat that will eventually hit the mean.

Isn't that the whole idea behind good knuckleball (or sinkerball) pitchers? Don't let batters get good contact on balls so they hit mostly pop us, weak grounders, or foul balls. But that isn't really cool anymore so no one really tries mastering it. Nowadays seems like everyone wants the studs throwing 100 MPH that strike everyone out, so are more and more the kinds of pitchers you see coming up.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

Isn't that the whole idea behind good knuckleball (or sinkerball) pitchers? Don't let batters get good contact on balls so they hit mostly pop us, weak grounders, or foul balls. But that isn't really cool anymore so no one really tries mastering it. Nowadays seems like everyone wants the studs throwing 100 MPH that strike everyone out, so are more and more the kinds of pitchers you see coming up.

I've watched enough baseball games to be pretty damn sure there are pitchers who are harder to hit solidly whether you put the ball into play off them or not, but maybe it's all an illusion. Incidentally Maddux' BABIP for his career was 9 points below the league average, and if you exclude his end of career seasons probably a bit better than that. That seems significant to me but I don't know. Kershaw -- 23 points below.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I've watched enough baseball games to be pretty damn sure there are pitchers who are harder to hit solidly whether you put the ball into play off them or not, but maybe it's all an illusion. Incidentally Maddux' BABIP for his career was 9 points below the league average, and if you exclude his end of career seasons probably a bit better than that. That seems significant to me but I don't know. Kershaw -- 23 points below.

Peter,

I'm with you. It's the interperative abilty of some people that seems to totally fail them. Oh, they can compile the data and create the formulas and all, but they still have to then determine and interpret the results and how truly meaningful they really are.

Example, there are a ton of different tax programs out there that are used by accountants, and some are definitely better (or worse) than others. Truthfully, most accountants/CPAs will tell they all have issues and could use lots of improvements to work better and more effectively. But the problem is these programs are created by programmers, not the accountants/CPAs that most often use them. And when we complain to programmers about issues, shortcomings, and errors in these programs they invariably give us their excu.....er, reasons, for not being able to really change anything because they are the programmers, we are not, and they know what they are doing so that is how it is. Hard to believe there could be so many variations in tax software out there when they are all supposedly trying do the same calculations across the board. One would think all tax programs should pretty much be exactly the same, basically this minus that times this rate = income taxes due, right? But its not, because programmers know programming, not taxes. And each different programmer puts their own unique thinking, biases, and such into the tax software product they create. And that's why their different tax software can end up being easier or harder to use than others, can do more or fewer things, and can even come up with completely different tax liability results.

Now go back and swap statisticians for programmers, and ask them to develop their formulas and equations to determine who the greatest lefty pitcher of all time is, instead of how to figure out what your income taxes will be next year. Want to guess how many statisticians will come up with different equations/formulas, along with different answers to the question, especially since each statistician will likely complete their assignment using their own definition of what "greatest" means, without ever asking what you or anyone else thought or wanted it to be?

[Peter_Spaeth]

I was told Maddux' BABIP "tracked precisely" the BABIP's of his era. I'd still like to know if -- given that in fact his career BABIP was 9 points lower than the average -- that is tracking precisely or not. Hard to explain away 23 years or whatever it was as a small sample size.

The other thing is, his BA against was 14 points lower than the average, even though he wasn't much of a strikeout pitcher. How does that happen?

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Your logic would mean there's no such thing as a great pitcher who pitches to contact, or who isn't a dominant strikeout pitcher, because once a batter puts a ball in play it's all just dumb luck. That just does not square with experience. Did you ever watch Greg Maddux pitch?

I realize people think that, but the fact of the matter is that yes, it is dumb luck. The idea that Greg Maddux was better able to control the fate of the ball after contact than his peers is not supported by the data, though often claimed. His BABIP numbers across the course of his career are precisely in line with league average BABIP numbers during that era. If you don't believe me, I can plot it for you.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I realize people think that, but the fact of the matter is that yes, it is dumb luck. The idea that Greg Maddux was better able to control the fate of the ball after contact than his peers is not supported by the data, though often claimed. His BABIP numbers across the course of his career are precisely in line with league average BABIP numbers during that era. If you don't believe me, I can plot it for you.

No they are 9 points lower, I already posted that.

If your thesis is that Greg Maddux' career (after all he was not a dominant strikeout pitcher with 6 K/9) was jut the result of dumb luck, you have pretty much disqualified yourself as knowing anything about baseball, however good you are with data.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

No they are 9 points lower, I already posted that.

If your thesis is that Greg Maddux' career (after all he was not a dominant strikeout pitcher with 6 K/9) was jut the result of dumb luck, you have pretty much disqualified yourself as knowing anything about baseball, however good you are with data.

My instincts about Maddux's BABIP were wrong. You're right, Maddux did beat the league average BABIP, particularly between 1992-1998 (see plot below). But you appear to be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying Greg Maddux was just a "lucky" pitcher. He was an excellent pitcher. I'm saying that people conflate his remarkable ability to control the ball with him having the ability to also control where the ball goes after someone puts it into play. The extent to which pitchers actually have this ability is miniscule at best. It's probably at least an order of magnitude less than people are thinking of when they make that claim. Maddux rarely walked hitters. He led the league in BB/9 9 times, and was probably in the top 3 15 times or more. This was his superpower. As I mentioned earlier, there is some research (which I'd have to read again, it's been a while) that suggests a really strong pitcher may have a small, but measurable effect on their BABIP, but that estimate is only something like 5 points worth of BABIP, which is to say out of every 1,000 times a ball gets put into play, an elite pitcher is able to prevent an additional 5 of those into becoming hits than his peers (hence I said it's a tough sell). However, a pitcher's BABIP can often fluctuate 70 or 80 points from one season to the next. Even if 5 of those points are within their control, that still leaves 65 to 75 points worth of variance or "luck" which is completely outside of their control.

BABIP is a very useful statistic for putting other stats into context. It is influenced primarily by luck, but also by the defensive talent of the players on the field, the skill of the batters, and by the ballpark. Hitters have a fair amount of control over their BABIP numbers (though they are also very much subject to luck in the short term) as exit velocity is highly correlated to BABIP values. The harder you hit the ball, the more likely it is to drop in for a hit. But pitchers face an approximately uniform (top of the order inflated) distribution of batters, so hitting talent mostly evens out for them with some minor exceptions (e.g., pitching in the NL yields a slightly lower BABIP than the AL because of the DH spot, and pitching in a division that is stacked with good hitters can deflate your BABIP if you have a higher than average number of starts against strong offensive teams than your peers. But these effects are fairly small. The overwhelming majority of the variance in BABIP values is simply due to random chance. And this variance is actually pretty wide from season to season, and it correlates highly with the fluctuations you see with other stats that are highly subject to luck as well (like ERA and WHIP).

A pitcher like Maddux had a few things going for him which should have helped him outperform the league average BABIP numbers. He pitched in the NL, was in a pitcher's park, and had Andruw Jones chasing down balls for him in CF. I'm not sure exactly how much each of those factors weighs in exactly off the top of my head, but they do have a measurable impact. But even if it is true that a pitcher as great as Maddux is capable of "beating" the BABIP line, the evidence shows that it would only be to the tune of a few balls out of 1,000. That's certainly not what people who promote the idea that he can control ball flights with his pitching style mean when they make such claims. If playing in a pitcher's park is worth 1 or 2 balls per 1,000, and having Andruw Jones running down fly balls is worth 1 or 2 per 1,000, and pitching in the NL is worth 2-3 balls per 1,000 and having god-like control is worth 3-5 balls per 1,000, that would add up to someone like Maddux beating the BABIP line by 9 points.

If you haven't read it before, this is worth a read. It has a pretty good explanation of BABIP and why it's important.

https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/babip/


And since I was wrong and am happy to admit when I'm wrong, here's a plot of Maddux vs the league average BABIP showing that he did in fact beat the league for a good several-year run in the 90s (note the blue line is MLB average, not NL average, which would be slightly lower).

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

My instincts about Maddux's BABIP were wrong. You're right, Maddux did beat the league average BABIP, particularly between 1992-1998 (see plot below). But you appear to be misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying Greg Maddux was just a "lucky" pitcher. He was an excellent pitcher. I'm saying that people conflate his remarkable ability to control the ball with him having the ability to also control where the ball goes after someone puts it into play. The extent to which pitchers actually have this ability is miniscule at best. It's probably at least an order of magnitude less than people are thinking of when they make that claim. Maddux rarely walked hitters. He led the league in BB/9 9 times, and was probably in the top 3 15 times or more. This was his superpower. As I mentioned earlier, there is some research (which I'd have to read again, it's been a while) that suggests a really strong pitcher may have a small, but measurable effect on their BABIP, but that estimate is only something like 5 points worth of BABIP, which is to say out of every 1,000 times a ball gets put into play, an elite pitcher is able to prevent an additional 5 of those into becoming hits than his peers (hence I said it's a tough sell). However, a pitcher's BABIP can often fluctuate 70 or 80 points from one season to the next. Even if 5 of those points are within their control, that still leaves 65 to 75 points worth of variance or "luck" which is completely outside of their control.

BABIP is a very useful statistic for putting other stats into context. It is influenced primarily by luck, but also by the defensive talent of the players on the field, the skill of the batters, and by the ballpark. Hitters have a fair amount of control over their BABIP numbers (though they are also very much subject to luck in the short term) as exit velocity is highly correlated to BABIP values. The harder you hit the ball, the more likely it is to drop in for a hit. But pitchers face an approximately uniform (top of the order inflated) distribution of batters, so hitting talent mostly evens out for them with some minor exceptions (e.g., pitching in the NL yields a slightly lower BABIP than the AL because of the DH spot, and pitching in a division that is stacked with good hitters can deflate your BABIP if you have a higher than average number of starts against strong offensive teams than your peers. But these effects are fairly small. The overwhelming majority of the variance in BABIP values is simply due to random chance. And this variance is actually pretty wide from season to season, and it correlates highly with the fluctuations you see with other stats that are highly subject to luck as well (like ERA and WHIP).

A pitcher like Maddux had a few things going for him which should have helped him outperform the league average BABIP numbers. He pitched in the NL, was in a pitcher's park, and had Andruw Jones chasing down balls for him in CF. I'm not sure exactly how much each of those factors weighs in exactly off the top of my head, but they do have a measurable impact. But even if it is true that a pitcher as great as Maddux is capable of "beating" the BABIP line, the evidence shows that it would only be to the tune of a few balls out of 1,000. That's certainly not what people who promote the idea that he can control ball flights with his pitching style mean when they make such claims. If playing in a pitcher's park is worth 1 or 2 balls per 1,000, and having Andruw Jones running down fly balls is worth 1 or 2 per 1,000, and pitching in the NL is worth 2-3 balls per 1,000 and having god-like control is worth 3-5 balls per 1,000, that would add up to someone like Maddux beating the BABIP line by 9 points.

If you haven't read it before, this is worth a read. It has a pretty good explanation of BABIP and why it's important.

https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/babip/


And since I was wrong and am happy to admit when I'm wrong, here's a plot of Maddux vs the league average BABIP showing that he did in fact beat the league for a good several-year run in the 90s (note the blue line is MLB average, not NL average, which would be slightly lower).

Two points: one, you at first presented your "instincts" about Maddux as if they were facts you already knew. Read the language of your post.

Two, Kershaw's BABIP is 27 points below the ML average for his career. What's your take on that which obviously can't be explained by NL alone?