How Many Pitches _Should_ Pitchers Have?

[RonCo]

Just as an interesting quickie exercise, I went to fangraphs and pulled some data on what pitches various pitchers have thrown in 2011. All total, the websitee categorizes 650 pitchers who have thrown in the MLB in 2011 (about 22/team, which is interesting in itself). Fangraphs categorizes 7 different pitch types, and lists by pitcher what percentages of his pitches were of each type.

This, I thought, was a great way to get a look into what size repertoires ought to exist in an OOTP league that's trying to mimic today's baseball.

I counted up how many pitchers have thrown only a single pitch type in major league games, and how many have thrown two pitch types, and three, and ... you get the idea. Here's what I got.

Types	Pitchers
0	4
1	1
2	45
3	262
4	285
5	50
6	2
7	1

Removing the four pitchers who have not yet thrown an inning or a pitch, that leaves us with 646 pitchers. The guy with only 1 pitch was outfielder Darnell Mcdonald, who threw 1 inning in blow-out relief. I'll throw him out, too. That leaves 645 pitchers.

Of these pitchers, only 45 (7%) of pitchers had only 2 pitches. I haven't done anything else to categorize these 45 pitchers, but this alone suggests that almost all pitchers in OOTP should come with three pitches.

[snepp]

If I could have thanked this post multiple times I would have.

[mouse001]

I've thanked and agreed but to play devil's advocate...

Of those 3+ pitch pitchers, how often do they throw them? I wouldn't really count a guy who throws one change-up in a game as having a change-up.

I have the knowledge on how to throw a variety of pitches and can throw them with their respective curves and (relative) speeds. I'm an IT guy who plays OOTP, not an athlete. If I was placed into the OOTP universe, I'd be a 0 pitch pitcher because I can't get guys swinging on a 40 mph curve or a 50 mph fastball. My point of just because a pitcher CAN throw a pitch doesn't mean he can pitch it in a game, vs professional hitters, effectively. I imagine even a guy with his third pitch rated at 1 / 10 can have success with it. To place me in the game and give me ratings for a three pitches all at 1 / 10 would be greatly over estimating my abilities

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Originally Posted by mouse001

I've thanked and agreed but to play devil's advocate...

Of those 3+ pitch pitchers, how often do they throw them? I wouldn't really count a guy who throws one change-up in a game as having a change-up.

I have the knowledge on how to throw a variety of pitches and can throw them with their respective curves and (relative) speeds. I'm an IT guy who plays OOTP, not an athlete. If I was placed into the OOTP universe, I'd be a 0 pitch pitcher because I can't get guys swinging on a 40 mph curve or a 50 mph fastball. My point of just because a pitcher CAN throw a pitch doesn't mean he can pitch it in a game, vs professional hitters, effectively. I imagine even a guy with his third pitch rated at 1 / 10 can have success with it. To place me in the game and give me ratings for a three pitches all at 1 / 10 would be greatly over estimating my abilities

It seems like an open question to me whether OOTP's pitch ratings are supposed represent everything a guy CAN throw, or everything he WILL throw. I guess it's moot, since the latter is all we care about anyway. Even then, it's still unclear if the ratings have anything at all to do with how often a guy throws a particular pitch, or even if OOTP models anything like that in the first place. Just notionally, my first instinct would be to think that a guy in OOTP who has two highly-rated pitches but a very poorly rated third pitch would be the kind of guy who "throws one change-up in a game."

[snepp]

I didn't take a very in-depth look, but from my cursory glance I would say that most of the very small percentage uses don't come from the third pitch on the 3-pitch guys, they come from the fourth pitch on the 4-pitch guys.

I'd say that any pitch that regularly sees game action, regardless of quantity, should at least get a poor rating.

[Matt Arnold]

Very nice.

I agree that most pitchers should have 3+ pitches. If a guy is throwing a pitch at least 5% of the time, he should be rated at it, even if poorly. If we take everyone this year with at least 40 IP and consider him rated at a pitch if he throws it at least 5% of the time, then we get:
#P Ct
1 0
2 56
3 146
4 126
5 12
6 0
avg 3.276470588
stdev 0.775760669


So roughly a bell curve. If players were created with pitch frequencies like that (or at least if the game was changed so that pitchers ended up with frequencies like that, so like have your average pitcher start with 2.5 pitches, but have them gain 0.75 pitches as they work their way through the minors), that would be fantastic. Then you pretty much only need to play around with endurance values and pitch values to get the right number of "starter only", "SP/RP", and "Relief only" type pitchers.

[RonCo]

I've pulled down a whole buncha data now, and plan to have some fun with math over the next few days.

[THEOVELS]

I saw an old interview with Stan Musial doing a mock interview with Ted Williams. Stan asked Ted if he (Ted) was a "guess" hitter. Ted's answer: "Sure I was a guess hitter. If I knew a pitcher threw a knuckle ball, but only once a game... I didn't guess that!"

I think amount of pitches should reflect the amount of times used and the quality of the pitch thrown. I notice that my sinker ball pitchers throw that pitch way to many times. Especially when their fastball is their best pitch and the sinker is second.

[sc_superstar]

Usually in the real MLB, most relievers only use 2 pitches even those that can throw 3+ because a RP usually only throws to 3-6 batters, so you dont need to fool a guy 3+ times per game by mixing pitches, you usally just throw your best stuff at him (many converted starters often go from 4 pitches to FB plus a Curve, Changeup or Slider.) They may on a super rare occasion throw that pitchbut he probably will only throw it 1% or less of the time. OOTP accurately represents this as your stuff rating changes based on your first 2 pitches.

What would be best if coding was possible was that all pitches had 3-5 pitches but only used 2 if they were an MR or CL

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by sc_superstar

Usually in the real MLB, most relievers only use 2 pitches even those that can throw 3+ because a RP usually only throws to 3-6 batters, so you dont need to fool a guy 3+ times per game by mixing pitches, you usally just throw your best stuff at him (many converted starters often go from 4 pitches to FB plus a Curve, Changeup or Slider.) They may on a super rare occasion throw that pitchbut he probably will only throw it 1% or less of the time. OOTP accurately represents this as your stuff rating changes based on your first 2 pitches.

What would be best if coding was possible was that all pitches had 3-5 pitches but only used 2 if they were an MR or CL

This isn't really shown in the fangraphs data (which is published for 2011 to date as of yesterday afternoon), or at least not as strongly as you seem to be suggesting. If I remove all pitchers who started in at least 90% of their appearances, and look at total pitches they threw, then compare to pitches they threw at least 5% of the time (1 in 20), I get:

N	All	5%
1	0	0
2	44	139
3	226	238
4	166	82
5	26	4
6	0	0
7	1	0

So with 463 total pitchers, only 44 (9.5%) have only thrown two pitches and only two. If we don't count pitches thrown < 5% of the time, that number increases to 139 (30%). So this suggests that, yes, relievers rely more often on only two pitches. But still 70% of relief pitchers throw three pitches more than 5% of the time. This means that in any 20-pitch outing they are likely to throw that third pitch at least once.

If I change the limit and remove pitchers who started more than 50% of the time they threw, I get:

N	All	5%
1	0	0
2	44	135
3	218	226
4	150	66
5	15	1
6	0	0
7	1	0

Total pitchers = 429
10.3% threw only two pitches
31.5% threw only two pitches > 95% of the time

If I remove all pitchers who ever started a game, and focus only on pitchers who appears in relief roles only, I get:

N	All	5%
1	0	0
2	44	130
3	208	206
4	119	44
5	9	1
6	0	0
7	1	0

Total pitchers = 381
11.5% threw only two pitches
34.1 threw only two pitches > 95% of the time

So I read this data to say that while pitchers do tend to limit their repertoire in relief roles, more than 66% of all relievers throw three pitches actively in games and 90% will slip their third pitch in on a few rare occasions.

[RonCo]

More fun with numbers:

To get a feel for what pitches were left out of a relievers repertoire, I looked at the "quality" of pitches that relievers threw less than 5% of the time. I graded quality based on Pitch Type Linear Weights per 100 pitches. This may or may not be a great way to assess quality, but it's the best data I've got. So let's see what it says.

Fastball: No relief pitcher with a fastball ever threw it less than 5% of the time.

Slider: 289 relief pitchers have thrown a slider in a game, of these 17 threw it less than 5% of the time. Of the 17, ten of their sliders scored as negative value pitches. Only 7 of these sliders, however, scored as that pitcher's worst pitch.

Cutter: 67 relief pitchers have thrown a cutter in a game. Seven of those pitchers threw it less than 5% of the time. Of the seven, the cutter was of negative value three times, and was in fact that pitcher's least valuable pitch in each of those three times. Of interest is that the cutter was the MOST valuable pitch for three of these pitchers.

Curve: 182 relief pitchers have thrown a curveball in a game, 39 of these threw it less than 5% of the time. 22 of these 39 had negative value. 18 of them were that pitcher's worst pitch.

Change: 267 relief pitchers have thrown a changeup in a game. 102 threw it less than 5% of the time. 68 of those changups were of negative value. 57 of these change ups were that pitcher's least valuable pitches.

Split Finger: 52 relief pitchers have thrown a splitter in a game. 9 of them threw it less than 5% of the time. Four of those SFs were of negative value, and four were the pitcher's worst pitch.

Knuckleball: Only Ryan Franklin threw a knuckleball, and he threw it only 2.1% of the time. it was a negative pitch value, and his worst. I note that Franklin actually throws all seven pitches in games, and five of them more than 5% of the time. Only his slider and change up are positive value pitches.

Here's the data in a tabular format:

	N	<5%	Neg	Worst
Slider	289	17	10	7
Cutter	67	7	3	3
Curve	182	39	22	18
Change	267	102	68	57
Splitr	52	9	4	4
Knuckle	1	1	1	1
				
		175	108	90

So, of the 175 relief pitcher/pitches that have been thrown less than 5% of the time, only 108 (61.7%) are of negative value, and only 90 (51.4%) are their worst pitches. I think I've got lots of massaging I need to do to the source data before I would take any of this to the bank and actually design around these numbers. In addition, this is only a look at pitches that have been discarded to the 5% bin--not a look at the pitches that these guys have chosen to rely upon instead.

But I do tend to think the information in the past few posts suggest that very few pitchers have only two fundamentally effective pitches, and that while pitchers worst pitches are (barely) the most discarded, even the pitches relievers tend to go away from are often somewhat effective.

[Matt Arnold]

I wouldn't necessarily trust pitch linear weights for pitches thrown less than 5% of the time. You're sometimes only grabbing a handful of data points there, and I'm not sure what level it takes to become significant.

[RonCo]

Yes, LW is not particularly great, but it's all I've got and I'm just kinda playing around with it at present. You can definitely see lots of noise in the data.

[RonCo]

Looking only starting pitchers we see the following:

264 Pitchers

N	All	>5%
1	0	0
2	0	15
3	54	96
4	167	137
5	41	16
6	2	0
7	0	0

A couple points:

(1) Well over half SP have and throw more than three pitches
(2) There have been 15 pitchers who have started games that throw predominantly two pitches. But ...

Let's look at those 15.

Five of these have appeared predominantly as relief pitchers:

Aneury Rodriguez (39 G, 8 Starts)
Chris Jakubauskas (31 G, 6 starts)
Miguel Batista (29 G, 4 starts)
Lance Lynn (18 G, 2 starts)
Dan Runzler (23 G, 1 start)

In addition, Nathan Eovaldi throws his change exactly 5% and two other off-pitches 1.5%, and 1.7%, for a combined "third pitch" frequency of 8.2%. In this vein, if I used 4% as my cut-off, which seems as reasonable as 5 for starters, only six pitchers would qualify, and one is Tim Wakefield, who throws 90% knuckleballs and 8% fastballs. Another is R.A.Dickey, another knuckleball expert (75% knuckle, 23% fastball).

This leaves me four examples of two-pitch starters--one of whom has had only 7 starts, and thrown only 37 innings in them.

Name	Team	GS	IP	FB%	SL%	CT%	CB%	CH%
Mastrsn	CLE	31	205.1	84.30%	15.00%			0.60%
Santana	LAA	31	215.2	58.90%	38.00%			3.10%
Harden	OKL	12	68.1	60.40%	1.40%			38.20%
H. Sosa	HOU	7	37.2	61.30%	35.90%			2.90%

So, two-pitch starters can exist, but they should be few and far between. Even then, each of these two-pitch pitchers have a third that they go to 1-3 times per 100-pitch game.

I note that from a linear weights standpoint, the top three have either one dominant pitch they get their outs with (Harden's slider is an outstanding 4.1 on the /C scale, and Santana's slider is a 2.14), or a suite of positive ones (Masterson's FB = .63, Slider = 1.76, Change = 1.57). Just for reference, I'm new to looking at pitch-type LW, but it seems a 3.0-5.0 is going to be top of the class in any one pitch, a 1.0-3.0 is very good, and anything positive is more than acceptable. That's just my take, though. Santana's second pitch is a -.21 (he also throws a changeup 3-4 times a game...assuming 100 pitches in a game).

[RonCo]

I note that the linear weights quailty of Sosa's pitches, his pedigree, and his current success so far suggest to me that he's not going to be a two-pitch starter for much longer. He's clearly not in the same class as the other three.

[TribeFanInNC]

Nice analysis Ron. I agree with your premise - the game doesn't really feature enough pitches. It has always seemed to me that pitchers in OOTP don't have enough fastballs in their repertoire. I would think a lot of pitchers show more than one movement on their fastball (like a 4-seamer and a 2-seamer).

I always have trouble relying on pitches thrown data though. Justin Masterson is a perfect example. Sure by pitch tracking, he throws 90% fastballs. But his fastballs have at least 3 distinct movements - a more straight 4-seamer he uses up in the zone, a tailing fastball that runs away from lefties and back doors righties, and a sinker that dives down in the zone.

[snepp]

Here's another nugget to chaw on, the BIS data doesn't distinguish between 4-seam and 2-seam (or sinker in OOTP). Masterson throws two distinctly different fastballs, in OOTP terms he could be a solid 3-pitch pitcher.

[RonCo]

Yes, I think it's fair to say that many of the best pitches have nuances on their base pitch that makes them operate as if they have mulitple pitches. I suggest that this might shows up in the BIS data above by the linear weight score being quite high, but that's just supposition.

Obviously, none of this is meant to be preciesly perfect. But its seeming to be a pretty good indicator of what the game ought to look like if you squint just a little.

Beyond all the data issues here, realize this is just data from 90% of a single year in a single era. So if I put on my "poke holes at it" hat, I can come up with lots of questions that would be great to get answered.

[blueturf]

RonCo, these are fascinating figures and hopefully this is the crux to some reworking of how Pitchers are created within the game. This is probably my #1 annoyance with OOTP and I would love to see more pitchers come up with a 3rd pitch and for there to be some type of indicator of how often he throws each pitch.

[Cinnamon J. Scudworth]

Originally Posted by sc_superstar

Usually in the real MLB, most relievers only use 2 pitches even those that can throw 3+ because a RP usually only throws to 3-6 batters, so you dont need to fool a guy 3+ times per game by mixing pitches, you usally just throw your best stuff at him (many converted starters often go from 4 pitches to FB plus a Curve, Changeup or Slider.) They may on a super rare occasion throw that pitchbut he probably will only throw it 1% or less of the time. OOTP accurately represents this as your stuff rating changes based on your first 2 pitches.

What would be best if coding was possible was that all pitches had 3-5 pitches but only used 2 if they were an MR or CL

Assuming things were changed so that the balance of pitchers in OOTP included more 3-5 pitch players to begin with, I think what you are asking for in the last line is functionally the same as what you correctly identified as the game already doing: giving relievers an artificial bump in "stuff," tied to the strength of his top two pitches.