Recent conversation has occurred around the wonderous talents of Mark Wareham, and exactly how it’s possible for a guy to draw the kind of walks it takes to hit .180 and still manage to get on base at a .400 clip. The theory, it seems, is that this would never happen, because pitchers would throw more “get it over” strikes to a guy who they knew couldn’t hit.
Well.
Yeah. That seems right.
But, you know, there’s another possible answer within the realm of “real” baseball. It’s possible that the pitcher could throw a guy strike after strike, and the guy was just able to foul them off so often that (1) he wouldn’t strike out, and (2) the pitcher would eventually walk him.
This got me to thinking about the game log script. It’s perfectly positioned to look at this situation. I mean, how many balls and strikes does Mark Wareham see relative to the league? Is his performance an OOTP ism, or is it actually “realistic” in the sense I’ve laid out a moment ago. In other words, does he foul off a lot more pitches than your average River Monster?
Well, I’m glad you asked…here’s the data in games through the end of April (about 28 games per team).
| Hitter | Pitches | Balls | Str Called | Str Swing | Str Foul | Str Batted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| League | 125348 | 48183 | 20421 | 11760 | 21361 | 23623 |
| 38.44% | 16.29% | 9.38% | 17.04% | 18.85% | ||
| Mark Wareham | 655 | 295 | 107 | 52 | 146 | 55 |
| 45.04% | 16.34% | 7.94% | 22.29% | 8.40% |
On the other hand, it’s also true that Wareham, bless is heart, is fouling off pitches at a 22.9% rate, while the rest of the league does this with only 17% of pitches. This is kind of weird, I guess, but fits into the whole argument against this kind of unicorn. For example, one could argue that the average hitter fouls off more pitches if they swing at ball our of the zone—maybe. I don’t know that that’s true, but it sounds good in a conference room.
Bottom line: yes, it does seem that for whatever reason OOTP does things they way they do, the game probably does get this wrong. At least it does if the idea is that pitchers would be a lot more aggressive with him, anyway.
Ultimately, of course, it’s this kind of thing that makes guys like Mark Wareham the unicorns they is.
