Monday, July 21, 2003

 

I may have mentioned Voros McCracken's work before. He published a groundbreaking study a couple of years ago that seemed to indicate that pitchers have no real ability to affect batting average on balls in play. After he crunched all the pitching stats for a few seasons, he concluded that pitchers succeed by controlling walks, strikeouts, and homers. But once the batter hit the ball, it was really the batter's skill that determined what happened.

This struck a lot of people as nonsensical. Good pitching beats good hitting, doesn't it?

Tom Tippett over at Diamond Mind Baseball decided to do a much larger study, using all pitching data since 1913. His conclusion? Pitchers have far more control over walks and strikeouts, but they still do influence batting average on balls in play. In fact, some pitchers have quite a lot of control over that. You can read Tippett's fascinating study here.

So Kirk Reuter, you're off the hook! (But you're still on the shelf.)

This study comes as a bit of a relief to me. If McCracken's hypothesis was right, then my favorite baseball event, the no-hitter, doesn't mean much as a measure of skill. But since it appears to be incorrect, then no-hitters still mean something.

Jefferson 5:59 PM

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