Of course, this meant that I woke up early in the morning realizing I already had all the data I needed based on that fun little script I run.
Off Topic
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All I had to do was sort it by pitcher, game, hitter, and inning of each event, and I’d have things ordered properly. At that point, I needed to create a quickie formula to label each plate appearance in it’s proper order.
After cleaning up a couple oddities (for example, removing plate appearances that end in a caught stealing or pick off), I had all the information I needed.
Bring in the old pivot table magician, and we’re cooking with gas.
All I had to do was sort it by pitcher, game, hitter, and inning of each event, and I’d have things ordered properly. At that point, I needed to create a quickie formula to label each plate appearance in it’s proper order.
After cleaning up a couple oddities (for example, removing plate appearances that end in a caught stealing or pick off), I had all the information I needed.
Bring in the old pivot table magician, and we’re cooking with gas.
So, that’s what I did. Pulled out the spreadsheet, made the changes, and then tabulated the result of every plate appearance by the number of times a pitcher faced a batter in the game.
Here’s the raw data:
| Times | PA | AB | H | 1B | 2B | 3B | HR | BB | HBP | IBB | K | CI | E | GO | FO | BO | Sac |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 108875 | 98834 | 24001 | 15147 | 4605 | 689 | 3560 | 6717 | 2396 | 411 | 22127 | 16 | 1183 | 26763 | 24686 | 74 | 501 |
| 2 | 52105 | 47679 | 12393 | 7745 | 2405 | 331 | 1912 | 2923 | 1226 | 66 | 8638 | 5 | 595 | 13597 | 12430 | 26 | 206 |
| 3 | 30535 | 27989 | 7416 | 4635 | 1476 | 182 | 1123 | 1577 | 709 | 64 | 4433 | 2 | 411 | 8152 | 7564 | 13 | 194 |
| 4 | 3977 | 3624 | 1013 | 619 | 208 | 32 | 154 | 211 | 84 | 35 | 470 | 1 | 49 | 1117 | 975 | 22 | |
| 5 | 40 | 36 | 12 | 10 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 10 | 10 | 1 | ||||
| Total | 195532 | 178162 | 44835 | 28156 | 8695 | 1234 | 6750 | 11430 | 4416 | 576 | 35671 | 24 | 2239 | 49639 | 45665 | 113 | 924 |
Admittedly, that’s a bit hard to take in.
So I then calculated lots of the rate stats we like to see, which gave me:
| Times | AVG | OBP | SLG | OPS | BABIP | K/AB | HR/AB | BB/PA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0.243 | 0.308 | 0.411 | 0.719 | 0.279 | 0.224 | 0.036 | 0.062 |
| 2 | 0.260 | 0.319 | 0.445 | 0.763 | 0.282 | 0.181 | 0.040 | 0.056 |
| 3 | 0.265 | 0.320 | 0.451 | 0.771 | 0.281 | 0.158 | 0.040 | 0.052 |
| 4 | 0.280 | 0.338 | 0.482 | 0.820 | 0.286 | 0.130 | 0.042 | 0.053 |
| 5 | 0.333 | 0.375 | 0.444 | 0.819 | 0.344 | 0.083 | 0.028 | 0.050 |
Which says that: yes, Virginia, there really is a Times Through the Order “penalty.”
One assumes this is a factor of pitcher fatigue, hitter’s receiving a benefit, or both. In the end, I have no idea exactly how the game codes it—and it probably doesn’t really matter. But if you scan down the table you’ll see that the more times a pitcher faces a hitter, the better that hitter will do (with one interesting exception that I’ll get to in a sec).
First, though, a few notes:
- I first note that only 40 PA occurred in which a pitcher was allowed to face a hitter for the fifth time, meaning that line is very subject to sample size bias.
- That said, note how Average and OBP slide exactly how you’d expect them to. SLG does the same, but has a little regression at the 5th PA. I suggest that’s a sample size issue.
- When I read this, it says the third time through the order is a little scary (depending on the pitcher, I suppose), but the fourth time through is downright death-defying.
- I think BABIP is an interesting one given that pitchers are supposed to have little to no influence. Pitchers BABIP, however, was about three points better when facing hitters for the first time, then dropped for pass two and three, and fell off the table after that. (keep this in mind for a minute, too)
- K-rates and HR rates are pretty much exactly what you would expect, though again HR rate had a weirdness in that 5th time through the order
This brings me to the one outlier: Walk rate.
A scan down this list suggests that walk rate actually gets a little better as a pitcher makes his way through the order. This is counterintuitive.
I think, however, there’s some position bias built into the data. In other words, the fact that we’ve thrown relievers and starters into the mix together warps everything, and IMO, warps walk rate the most--simply because low control relievers are more prevalent than low control starters. I note, for example, that there were 108,875 plate appearances in which a pitcher was facing a hitter for the first time, and only 53,105 in which that same pitcher faced the hitter a second time (as either a starter or a long reliever).
This makes some sense as an influencer of the BABIP thing, too, if one assumes that legends suggesting very high stuff pitchers gain a tiny BABIP boost are true. Relievers tend to be higher Stuff, lower Control.
Ultimately, it would be good to look at this for starters only--which is maybe something else I can grab from this data with a little more fiddling. Time will tell.
Final Thoughts
Anyway…there’s that.
The answer is, yes, I’m pretty sure that starters and long relievers in OOTP pay a Times Through the Order penalty.
Should that change how we give out awards? (In other words, does that mean those 160 inning relievers should be given a demerit since they mostly won’t face hitters more than once? Or should a 160 inning guy who pitches to a 1.15 pLi be considered more valuable than an 80 inning closer that pitches in a pLi of 1.7?)
I dunno. That’s up to us all to think about in our own ways.
The narrative of the league is a beautiful thing either way.
However, I do think there’s value in GMs understanding the dynamic in play, and use the tools OOTP give you in ways that attempt to leverage that dynamic to win more games.
