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.
| 0 | 7 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0.286 | 0.167 | Infinity |
| 1 | 80 | 69 | 17 | 2 | 0.342 | 0.391 | 34.5 |
| 2 | 440 | 383 | 101 | 21 | 0.356 | 0.48 | 18.24 |
| 3 | 1261 | 1096 | 344 | 65 | 0.399 | 0.571 | 16.86 |
| 4 | 1491 | 1285 | 417 | 97 | 0.413 | 0.63 | 13.25 |
| 5 | 759 | 642 | 242 | 51 | 0.470 | 0.702 | 12.59 |
| 6 | 301 | 250 | 91 | 23 | 0.463 | 0.748 | 10.87 |
| 7 or greater | 193 | 150 | 70 | 15 | 0.577 | 0.853 | 10 |
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.
| 0 | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0.4 | 0 | Infinity |
| 1 | 70 | 45 | 6 | 3 | 0.443 | 0.356 | 15 |
| 2 | 388 | 258 | 69 | 19 | 0.512 | 0.535 | 13.58 |
| 3 | 1046 | 759 | 228 | 67 | 0.491 | 0.642 | 11.33 |
| 4 | 1397 | 988 | 322 | 120 | 0.521 | 0.765 | 8.23 |
| 5 | 663 | 467 | 167 | 58 | 0.545 | 0.807 | 8.05 |
| 6 | 246 | 168 | 69 | 27 | 0.594 | 0.97 | 6.22 |
| 7 or greater | 157 | 104 | 41 | 16 | 0.596 | 0.904 | 6.5 |
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.
| 0 | 13 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 0.231 | 0.091 | Infinity |
| 1 | 80 | 71 | 8 | 0 | 0.213 | 0.169 | Infinity |
| 2 | 421 | 354 | 94 | 15 | 0.376 | 0.449 | 23.6 |
| 3 | 1464 | 1273 | 361 | 84 | 0.373 | 0.529 | 15.15 |
| 4 | 1825 | 1540 | 471 | 131 | 0.408 | 0.612 | 11.76 |
| 5 | 989 | 835 | 282 | 72 | 0.434 | 0.666 | 11.6 |
| 6 | 379 | 307 | 103 | 27 | 0.455 | 0.671 | 11.37 |
| 7 or greater | 255 | 213 | 78 | 23 | 0.462 | 0.77 | 9.26 |
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.
| 0 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0.429 | 0.2 | Infinity |
| 1 | 89 | 80 | 15 | 1 | 0.270 | 0.250 | 80 |
| 2 | 320 | 284 | 78 | 11 | 0.350 | 0.437 | 25.82 |
| 3 | 1179 | 993 | 279 | 66 | 0.391 | 0.542 | 15.05 |
| 4 | 1568 | 1330 | 432 | 94 | 0.421 | 0.614 | 14.15 |
| 5 | 888 | 731 | 250 | 61 | 0.452 | 0.67 | 11.98 |
| 6 | 381 | 314 | 127 | 35 | 0.509 | 0.834 | 8.97 |
| 7 or greater | 254 | 201 | 70 | 23 | 0.478 | 0.746 | 8.74 |
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)
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 . . .
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.