Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
October 11, 2008
Walking Counts

Cameron Martin examines how well Daisuke Matsuzaka performs in hitter counts:

Hearing this, I made the obvious conclusion that he probably ended up walking most of those batters. Further digging at Baseball-Reference.com tells me otherwise: The 16 times he fell behind 2-0 (doesn't that seem like a low total?), Dice-K didn't walk a single batter all season. That's pretty amazing. The 50 times he fell behind 3-1, he only allowed two hits -- both singles -- while walking the batter 32 times (and hitting one batter).

So he basically never gives in to the hitter.

Like last night, Dice-K's wildest inning tends to be the first. I wonder if that helps set up batters for the rest of the game? They start thinking he's going to miss the corner, so they end up taking pitches later in the game at which they should swing. Is his early wildness luring batters into a sense of complacency that benefits Matsuzaka later in the game? The stats seem to point to this kind of effect in the second and third inning, at least.


Posted by David Pinto at 01:56 PM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

This guy is looking at the B-R splits incorrectly. He's looking at the *on 2-0* stats; of course he hasn't walked a guy on a 2-0 pitch. In 118 PAs that have gotten to 2-0, he's walked 47 guys but only given up eight hits in 67 ABs. Still impressive, but less so.

Posted by: Vegas Watch at October 11, 2008 02:58 PM
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