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Thursday, January 11, 2007

The Hook Part II

In a recent post I provided a list of how frequently teams enjoyed the platoon advantage on defense when changing pitchers. Tangotiger asks...

"Your list for pitchers is 62%. Of course, when a closer is brought in, the manager is not looking at the platoon advantage. As well, in blowouts, the manager is not looking for platoon advantages.

Can you break up your list based on whether the pitcher is the "ace" or not, and whether the score is within 4 runs or not?"
Yes.

Below is the same table but this time only when the team's closer (defined as the player who had the most saves in 2006) is not the pitcher being brought in and when the run differential is 3 or fewers runs.


Team Changes Adv Pct
SEA 259 199 76.8%
DET 219 167 76.3%
CHA 217 163 75.1%
SLN 231 166 71.9%
CLE 202 144 71.3%
PIT 332 235 70.8%
TOR 290 204 70.3%
BAL 260 182 70.0%
NYA 264 184 69.7%
CHN 290 200 69.0%
COL 296 201 67.9%
CIN 256 173 67.6%
KCA 275 183 66.5%
MIN 217 144 66.4%
SFN 274 181 66.1%
HOU 274 180 65.7%
ATL 317 208 65.6%
MIL 255 167 65.5%
TEX 253 164 64.8%
PHI 288 185 64.2%
ANA 186 119 64.0%
OAK 247 156 63.2%
SDN 295 183 62.0%
WAS 280 171 61.1%
FLO 230 139 60.4%
BOS 245 147 60.0%
NYN 246 145 58.9%
ARI 286 164 57.3%
TBA 291 166 57.0%
LAN 237 130 54.9%

Total 7812 5150 65.9%


As you can see it doesn't change the numbers that greatly and lifts the aggregate from 62% to 66%. As Tangotiger points out, the offense takes the platoon advantage 78% of the time when pinch hitting and that disparity is to be expected since the pitcher must actually pitch to one hitter and because these numbers include instances where the offensive team then used a pinch hitter, which in many cases gains they do for the express purpose of gaining the advantage. If non-pinch hitting cases are excluded the overall percentage goes up to 69% with Seattle climbing to 82.3% and the Dodgers still at the bottom at 58.8%.

When the game is tighter managers are also more likely to try and gain the platoon advantage (non closer).


Tied 65.5%
1 Run 67.0%
2 Run 65.9%
3 Run 64.6%
4 Run 64.0%
5 Run 62.1%
6 Run 55.3%
>6 53.3%


Perhaps counterintuitively, managers do not seem to display the same tendency based on the inning of the pitching change (given 3 runs or fewer differential and non-closer).


Inning 4 69.4%
Inning 5 69.0%
Inning 6 69.4%
Inning 7 67.9%
Inning 8 66.6%
Inning 9 58.4%
Inning 10+ 58.1%


The reason for this is probably due in large part to the fact that the manager has only so many pitchers at his disposal and so his first reliever (likely used in the 6th or 7th innings) will be the most likely to enjoy the advantage. The manager will then be forced to use the pitchers that remain as the game goes later and so can't be so choosy about the matchup he'll get.

1 comment:

Tangotiger said...

Fantastic stuff. Interesting that the splits aren't wider than that, when you do the breakdowns.