Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
August 06, 2007
Drinking Up the Dregs

The post about Ruth made me wonder if today's sluggers beat up on the bad pitchers of today. The Day by Day batting events go back to 2000, which makes it easy to figure out batter vs. pitcher stats. And since there is a great slugger whose career is covered by that time frame, I'll start with Albert Pujols. Pitchers are divided into bins based on their ERA in the season they faced Albert. The bins go from x.00 to x.99, with the x representing the bin number. So any stats Pujols gathered against Jake Peavy in 2004 go into the "2" bin, but in 2006 they would go in the "4" bin.

Albert Pujols vs. Pitchers, 2001-2007. Bin represents a range of one run of ERA.
BinPAABHHROBASlugABperHR
076100.2860.167Infinity
180691720.3420.39134.5
2440383101210.3560.4818.24
312611096344650.3990.57116.86
414911285417970.4130.6313.25
5759642242510.4700.70212.59
630125091230.4630.74810.87
7 or greater19315070150.5770.85310

So as you can see, the worse the pitcher, the better Albert performs. Let's check Bonds:

Barry Bonds vs. Pitchers, 2000-2007. Bin represents a range of one run of ERA.
BinPAABHHROBASlugABperHR
053000.40Infinity
17045630.4430.35615
238825869190.5120.53513.58
31046759228670.4910.64211.33
413979883221200.5210.7658.23
5663467167580.5450.8078.05
624616869270.5940.976.22
7 or greater15710441160.5960.9046.5

Bonds kills everyone, but if you send a pitcher against him with an ERA of 6 or more, you're just asking to see a long ball. Now here's A-Rod. He's not as extreme as the others:

Alex Rodriguez vs. Pitchers, 2001-2007. Bin represents a range of one run of ERA.
BinPAABHHROBASlugABperHR
01311100.2310.091Infinity
18071800.2130.169Infinity
242135494150.3760.44923.6
314641273361840.3730.52915.15
4182515404711310.4080.61211.76
5989835282720.4340.66611.6
6379307103270.4550.67111.37
7 or greater25521378230.4620.779.26

Notice that A-Rod's home run rate isn't that different once the pitcher's ERA goes over 4.00. He kills them all equally well. And let's finish with Manny Ramirez:

Manny Ramirez vs. Pitchers, 2001-2007. Bin represents a range of one run of ERA.
BinPAABHHROBASlugABperHR
075100.4290.2Infinity
189801510.2700.25080
232028478110.3500.43725.82
31179993279660.3910.54215.05
415681330432940.4210.61414.15
5888731250610.4520.6711.98
6381314127350.5090.8348.97
7 or greater25420170230.4780.7468.74

For all the pattern is about the same. They mostly face pitchers with a seasonal ERA of four or higer, and they hit them very well as far as home runs are concerned. With the exception of A-Rod, these hitters keep getting much better as the pitchers get worse.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:19 PM | Sluggers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

It's obviously impossible to recreate 1920-30s baseball to solve this problem definitively, but another thing that might be done is to figure out how many starting pitchers there were in mlb in the Ruth era -- what 4 pitcher rotation, and 7 teams besides the Yanks, so roughly 28 pitchers? -- and then compare today's sluggers against the top 28 white-Anglo starting pitchers. Now obviously that doesn't get into the questions of diet, workout, etc . . .

Posted by: Yankee Fan in Chicago at August 6, 2007 09:23 PM

Of course, no one ever mentions that with 4-man rotations, you have to face Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, etc, 25% more often than you otherwise would have with a 5-man rotation. I guess they're not as fresh as they'd be in 5-man, but they're still GOOD!

David, great post, thanks for doing the work - it was fun and informative to see the numbers.

Posted by: Mike at August 6, 2007 09:41 PM
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