Comments on: Dice-BB?

By: dan

dan — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 04:52:49 +0000

“So in response to the â€œwalks a lot of guysâ€ non sense comment. Are you ignoring the bb/9 over 4 he posted three consectuive seasons?”

Yea, I’m pretty sure you can ignore Daisuke’s age 18,19,20 seasons when talking about his walk rate at age 27.

By: bigcpa

bigcpa — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:12:45 +0000

Frank-
Your list is littered with strikeout artists who are naturally going to allow fewer hits. If Dice-K had a superior ability to prevent hits on batted balls it wasn’t apparent in 2007 (.306 BABIP). And last year his real ERA was worse than his FIP.

By: Mike Ketchen

Mike Ketchen — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:11:29 +0000

So in response to the “walks a lot of guys” non sense comment. Are you ignoring the bb/9 over 4 he posted three consectuive seasons? Also He still limited damage in a year where he had his worst bb/9 and lowest strand rate. Huh, imagine a guy changes speed and hitters can not square him up. Because he A) changes speed B) nibbles. Now again he has gotten some what lucky. But, this is not that different from some past results.

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:07:59 +0000

As a huge Sox fan who has watched most of Dice-K’s starts, your statistical analysis misses something you see with the naked eye: they guy is really hard to hit. He’s only given up 124 hits in 163.7 innings (.76 H/Inn) this year, which is Petco-esque. He takes all kinds of chances and puts guys on base because he has tremendous confidence that no one can hit him. It’s maddening to watch, but it works, and has worked for two years (especially when you can keep the ball in the park):

Peavy 392 innings 311 hits (.79 H/Inn)
Lincecum 352 innings 294 hits (.84)
Dice K 368.3 innings 315 hits (.86)
Santana 436.3 innings 379 hits (.87)
Hamels 400.6 innings 348 hits (.87)
Burnett 379 innings 335 hits (.88)
Kazmir 354 innings 313 hits (.88)
Webb 449 innings 401 hits (.89)
Zambrano 400.3 innings 356 hits (.89)
Beckett 369 innings 355 hits (.90)
Wakefield 359 innings 337 hits (.94)
CC: 478 innings 453 hits (.95)
Haren 431.7 innings 410 hits (.95)
Shields 422 innins 402 hits (.95)
Lowe 407.3 innings 386 hits (.95)
Halladay 462.3 innings 446 hits (.96)
Vazquez 416.7 innings 399 hits (.96)
Lackey 384.7 innings 368 hits (.96)
Meche 414.3 innings 411 hits (.99)

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:08:31 +0000

dan:

I’d expect him more to regress to his 2007 stats than to “get shelled,” since his rates weren’t amazingly different last season, and the biggest difference in his favor is the large drop in HR/9.

By: dan

dan — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:36:37 +0000

What’s this “walked a lot of hitters in Japan” BS? He hadn’t walked more than 3 per 9 innings since 2001. And hi BABIP in 2004 was .357! From 2003-2006 in Japan it was between .277 and .357, so you can’t really say he had the ability to limit hits.

It’s smoke and mirrors. Unless he fixes something he’s going to get shelled next season pitching like he is now.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:21:53 +0000

Mooninite:

I don’t know eough about his career in Japan, but I think that studying the similarities between his rates and LOB% between America and Japan might be insightful.

As much as Dave is right that *usually* these things aren’t really “skills,” that doesn’t mean every such case is a “fluke.”

I think it’s worth a closer look, since he’s a unique pitcher in many ways.

By: Ignignokt

Ignignokt — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 20:00:23 +0000

I think Matsuzaka’s walks are partially by design. I watched Matsuzaka in Japan a lot and you always kinda knew he’d pull something like this. In Japan, starting pitchers were expected to finish their games and Matsuzaka had absolutely no problems throwing lots of pitches (try 300+ in one bullpen session). He also had a sort of intimidating aura around him in Japan that allowed him to get a lot of swings and misses outside of the strike zone, so it never really concerned him to throw a lot in the strike zone. I imagine that in his mind, he’d probably didn’t care if he walked batters because the likelihood of him getting outs on strikeouts or swings at bad pitches were very likely.

Now in the MLB, he seems to have retained some of that mentality. With so many pitches at his disposal that move in different directions, he’s kept people guessing just enough to get out of jams.

So I think it is repeatable (for him), but maybe not necessarily to this year’s degree.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:43:20 +0000

If his performance in Japan really does cho his first two MLB seasons, he might be one of the rare exceptional players who can sustain the ability to limit hits.

Obvious explanation no one has proposed yet: It’s the gyroball!

By: Dave Cameron

Dave Cameron — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 18:33:58 +0000

A general rule of thumb – if your explanation is “he’s an exception to the rule”, it’s probably not true. We hear this every year – some pitcher has a season of results that don’t match how he pitched, we hear post-hoc reasoning for why he’s unique, and then, when he eventually regresses back to the mean and proves that he isn’t that unique, everyone forgets about it and moves on.

Rinse and repeat. This year, it’s Matsuzaka.

Eventually, the “he’s the exception!” crowd will be right, and we’ll find someone who really is. But the people who assume that the crowd is always wrong will be right far more often.

This isn’t sustainable.