March 2, 2015

The Wheeler Play

Zack Wheeler doesn’t like defensive shifts, and the Mets were sensitive to his feelings and used them less when he was on the mound.

Hat tip, Hardball Talk.

When Voros McCracken first introduced defense-independent pitching statistics (DIPS), he theory was that if you remove home runs, walks, and strikeouts, all pitchers on a team would look pretty much the same. That is, the rate of batters reaching base on balls in play would be a function of the defense, not the pitchers. Tom Tippett showed that great pitchers do have an effect on BABIP, but to a first approximation, McCracken is right. If the lack of shifts was hurting Wheeler, we should see it in his BABIP stats.

Here is a list from FanGraphs of the Mets pitchers who threw at least 100 innings in 2014, sorted by BABIP. Wheeler ends up in the middle at .304, lower than Bartolo Colon and tied with Jon Niese. For some reason, Dillon Gee is way off the charts at .268. I wonder if the Mets shifted a lot for him? Looking at Wheeler, however, there is little evidence the lack of shifts hurt him.

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