April 14, 2004
Hits and Walks
A very interesting game pitched by Wade Miller today. He walked seven in seven innings, but only allowed two hits. The Cardinals could not convert his wildness and their selectivity into pitches they could hit and drive those runners home. Miller, despite walking seven, did not allow a run! Sometimes a walk isn't as good as a hit.
Posted by David Pinto at
04:26 PM
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How is this different from Miller allowing nine singles over seven innings and none of them scoring?
Its worse - I'd prefer my pitcher to give up fewer walks and more singles as walks are much more indicative of future performance than (non-home run) hits...
While as a 'Stros fan I'm not thrilled w/ Wade's wildness, and admittedly I didn't see the whole game so I don't know if this was the case in this particular game, the difference is that a walk will never score someone from second. In some cases, that gives the pitcher one or two more chances to work out of a jam. With the exception of Pujols' shot to the wall, not much of a threat against Miller today. But I agree with you, simon, that I'd much rather have a guy giving up a lot of singles than a lot of walks. Today was just the exception to the rule because nobody was hitting him hard.
He pitched around Pujols a few times, though. I'm a little worried, but St. Louis has a powerful lineup, and if nibbling at those bats keeps them stopping at first instead of trotting around it, then I'll live with the walks.
I was able to watch part of the game and found that both pitchers were having trouble finding the umpire's narrow strike zone. Carpenter had 60 pitches in the first 3 1/3 innings. Maybe the Astros are selective, but still. I'd toss this one out as aberration.
Is there a stat out there, or is it even important, that keeps track of the number of bases advanced by the runner(s) on base that a player's at-bat produces? In that way, the batter's performance will be evaluated more accurately with relevence to the situation. So a walk with bases empty and a groundout that moves runners to 2B and 3B will be reversed in their levels of success, counter to almost all the stats that we have right now.
This is the reason why I argue that a pitcher's best ability is it's ability to prevent homeruns which will always be at least one run. Pitchers have been able to post very good numbers despite not so great peripherals. An example Carlos Zambrano last year, when his ERA was 3.11 despite a K/9 rate of just over 7 and and almost 4 walks per nine innings.
Unfortunately the next most important factor is hits allowed, whether a pitcher can control these or not.
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There is an article on "Clutch Pitching" by Nate Silver from baseballprospectus.com. Check it out, it's really interesting:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?id=1561575