Pitch to Contact
by gr7070 on Oct 7, 2008 1:16 PM CDT
20 comments
This was in Neyer's chat today. Not sure if anyone will have much to comment on it, but here goes anyway.
Neil (DC): Is "pitching to contact" a legitimate strategy, or just something announcers say about a pitcher who doesn't strike anybody out? 
Rob Neyer: I don't know that it's much of a strategy, or even a tactic. It's better used (as you suggest) as a description after the fact. A few teams really have promoted it as a strategy, with predictably unfortunate results.
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pitching to contact
if you have a good defense and your sinkerballers (generally the pitch to contact guys) can throw strikes… maybe a semi-legitimate strategy to get by without great pitching talent.
but when youve got bad IF defense, a fast playing IF, and your pitchers lead the league in walks…. yeah…. that doesnt work.
the preceding post was a great success.
by DSheppard on Oct 7, 2008 1:35 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Even if all those things were good
The best way for a pitcher to reduce the amount of runs allowed is to strike batters out.
Pitching to contact removes or at least mitigates the greatest weapon at their disposal. Even if the pitcher is a poor strikeout pitcher one shouldn’t intentionally lessen that ability.
by gr7070 on Oct 7, 2008 1:46 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
it still all comes down to
making good pitches.
by SteveP on Oct 7, 2008 1:54 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Pitching to contact
is absolutely an absurd concept when you have a crappy infield defense and a fast field for your home field. It would be difficult to come up with a more self-defeating concept.
"Oh well, McCain is pretty communist anyway,... we can be 70% communist with McCain,"-Sharky
by DJCahill on Oct 7, 2008 2:07 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
I think the bigger point
is that it’s an absurd concept to begin with.
by gr7070 on Oct 7, 2008 2:25 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
I think that...
…you are correct in that assessment.
Physician: Primum non nocere
Batter: First, make no out
by Chad Crudup on Oct 7, 2008 2:33 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Pitching to contact
I’ve always kinda assumed that “pitching to contact” is really just avoiding those waste pitches that sometimes anxious hitters will hack at. I thought “pitching to contact” meant that when ahead in the count, pitchers would still try and throw quality strikes and induce weak contact, rather than waste pitches in the dirt that are near unhittable, but pretty easy to lay off of.
"So he tore it up in AA. Yippee. ...Max Ramirez be damned." - bigsteve
by tricer on Oct 7, 2008 2:35 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
was I overthinking
surely the strategy isn’t just “throw something up there that they will swing at and put in play”, right?
"So he tore it up in AA. Yippee. ...Max Ramirez be damned." - bigsteve
by tricer on Oct 7, 2008 2:40 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
I don't think you're overthinking
I just don’t think most teams really do that. I think most teams just teach pitchers to hope to get a groundball as quick as they can because they have no put away pitches.
By 2028, Mark Teixeira will be in the HOF.
-The Outlaw
by Gdawg on Oct 8, 2008 11:39 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
yeah, probably
trying to get further into games but not taking every count deep trying to get the guy to K and such.
unfortunately the rangers take every count deep because they cant throw strikes rather they want to or not.
the preceding post was a great success.
by DSheppard on Oct 7, 2008 2:44 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Pitching to contact
Roy Halladay is pretty much the gold standard for a pitcher that pitches complete games. He had nine this year. But he didn’t strike out 10 batters in any one game this season.
Getting some strikeouts is good, especially if you have, say, a runner on third with less than two outs. That’s where a true “out pitch” comes in handy. But also, if you have runners on first and second with one out, getting a double-play ball is quicker than a pair of strikeouts. Or, all those times the Rangers grounded out weakly on the first pitch of an at-bat… think of how much longer that allowed the starter to stay in the game.
by Inkara1 on Oct 7, 2008 3:12 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Halladay
got 7.5 Ks every 9 innings. I’d take that from the pitchers. He also gave up less than a walk and a half per 9, and only gave up .65 HRs per 9. If that is “pitch to contact” then I’ll take pitch to contact.
However, if you mean zero strikeouts, then you are likely talking about a pitcher with a .300 BA against or more.
"Oh well, McCain is pretty communist anyway,... we can be 70% communist with McCain,"-Sharky
by DJCahill on Oct 7, 2008 3:25 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
How is the absolute need for stikeouts
by pitchers to be effective squared with the blase attitude toward stikeouts by hitters that many bloggers and saber types have?
by mcgee48c on Oct 7, 2008 4:21 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs
Because
there are a lot of hitters who have been successful in terms of getting on base and getting hits when they don’t strike out, and there aren’t many pitchers who have been successful without striking out.
I can find a lot of hitters with a lot of strikeouts who have been productive. The top 10 strikeout list usually has 8 very productive hitters on it. The list of very low Strikeout rate pitchers isn’t quite so good.
Top 10 strikout hitters
1 Mark Reynolds
2 Ryan Howard
3 Jack Cust
4 Dan Uggla
5 Carlos Pena
6 Chris Young
7 Adam Dunn
8 Matt Kemp
9 Jim Thome
10 Ryan Ludwick
Lowest 10 strikeout pitchers (120 IP or more)
Glen Perkins
Luke Hochevar
Jose Contreras
Carlos Silva
Kyle Kendrick
Livan Hernandez
Jeremy Sowers
Brian Burres
Sidney Ponson
"Oh well, McCain is pretty communist anyway,... we can be 70% communist with McCain,"-Sharky
by DJCahill on Oct 7, 2008 4:40 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Well put...
…I am always annoyed when an otherwise fine offensive player is ridiculed for a high strikeout rate.
Physician: Primum non nocere
Batter: First, make no out
by Chad Crudup on Oct 7, 2008 4:44 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
What I'm saying is that
there are so many exceptions to both rules that the rules themselves are sort of …. well, of small use. Worrying so much about these stikeout peripherals and drawing so many predictive inferences from them is not really based on an incontrovertible foundation.
I think the inference that I find to be lacking is the importance of the K on the pitching side. Only rarely is a batter’s K really any worse than a drive caught at the fence. On the pitching side, the rate of popups and weakly hit ground balls can easily be substituted in worth for stikeout rate. These factors are hard to track and can probably not be objectively measured without a lot more info on each ball in play, but is present, in my opinion, and cannot be discounted just because we don’t have good enough information.
by mcgee48c on Oct 7, 2008 4:54 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
In the end, it doesn't matter about individual plays
it matters about the aggregate. Individual plays don’t matter.
High K hitters can still be effective. Often some of the most effective hitters are High K hitters. Low K pitchers are rarely effective over the course of a career.
That’s why folks shun low K pitchers, and don’t care as much if a hitter is a high K hitter. You asked the question, you got the answer.
You don’t believe the answer, feel free to browse the vast databases of baseball history. I just showed this year, but if you take any year at random you will get a similar result. The High K list has plenty of effective hitters, the low K pitchers list has a lot of stiffs.
"Oh well, McCain is pretty communist anyway,... we can be 70% communist with McCain,"-Sharky
by DJCahill on Oct 7, 2008 5:04 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
Yep
I think the comment above, “it all comes down to making good pitches” is the key. If a pitcher consistently makes good pitches, he’ll get some strikeouts even if he doesn’t lead the league in that department. Balls hit in play shouldn’t be hit as hard. It’s the low, low strikeout guys who tend to get too much of the plate.
by Black Francis on Oct 7, 2008 7:41 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
A tutorial
Good explanation. One further thing. Pitch to contact isn’t by any definition a strategy. It doesn’t have finite end results, and doesn’t occur over a time line. It’s a kind of philosophy, though. That philosophy being the recognition that your pitching staff and its’ probably successors are not likely to get 27 outs without help, so you coach them to work quickly, work the plate, throw strikes, and circumstances permitting, convert balls in play into outs. It’s a rationale for not depending on command and stuff.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
by Ed Coffin on Oct 7, 2008 10:46 PM CDT up reply actions 1 recs
You're having an
argument with yourself in your post. I’m sure that high-K pitchers are the best and high-K batters can be tolerated with high OPS and I don’t need vast databases to tell me that.
I just think there’s lots of irony in that the same 3rd strike is invaluable to the pitcher and is no big deal at all to the hitter.
by mcgee48c on Oct 8, 2008 10:31 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs
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