How Many Pitches Does it Take? Part Two
As promised, let’s split up the starters from the relievers. Rather than set an innings barrier, I instead opted to eliminate all of those with less than 50% of their appearances coming in the form of starts. Our friendly neighborhood Ryan Franklin no longer qualifies to be spoken about and the overall numbers drop like you would expect. Here’s the causality breakdown:
5 P – 7 dropped
4 P – 34 dropped
3 P – 64 dropped
2 P – 30 dropped
That leaves:
5 P – 21 pitchers
4 P – 85
3 P – 70
2 P – 9
How did they fare?
If you’re thinking to yourself that those numbers look a lot like those presented yesterday, then you have a good memory. In fact, here’s the differentials between yesterday and today:
Note that a negative value indicates a drop in FIP.
5 P: 0.02 runs
4 P: 0.03 runs
3 P: 0.08 runs
2 P: 0.66 runs
As expected, looking at mostly starters sees the run averages increase.
To address some concerns from this analysis:
I’m not looking at grips, arm slots, release points, etc. instead simply the classification of the pitch. Some of the classifications are erroneous or too simplistic for the pitch style. That’s understandable.
Also not looking at the quality of the pitch, that would take examination on a pitch-by-pitch basis.
Looking at individual pitchers before and after the addition of a new pitch is definitely something I’ll look into pursuing. No guarantees though.
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One thing I wonder about is pitchers with more than one fastball. I know Josh Beckett throws a four seam and a two seam, but if you look at his player file, he shows up as a three pitch guy. I’m sure he’s not alone. I wonder how effective having two fastballs is. Given that there are guys who bother to throw two different fast balls, you have to think that there’s some value in it.
It seems to me that you get a mix of two significant factors here – on one hand having more pitches keeps the hitter more off-balance, while at the same time better pitchers (and guys with better pure stuff) don’t really feel the need to develop 4-5 pitches.
I think that is a likely explanation in many cases. A lot of pitchers add another pitch or two because they’re not good enough to be effective with just 2 or 3.
It may be the small sample size, but the 2-pitch throwers have relatively high marks following the downward trend from 5-3 pitch throwers. I can only guess that at some point “guessing” right by the hitter comes into play. When facing a 2-pitch thrower, the hitter is going to guess right half the time on average.
And, I think the answer to the post is, it takes 3 pitches for starters.
I agree with the previous 2 comments. There is a lot to be said for the reverse direction of causation. Pitchers with worse primary and secondary pitches are not able to rely on those, and are forced to develop additional pitches to keep the batter off-balance. Someone like Cole Hamels doesn’t need anything beyond about 2 or 3 pitches because his first two are so hard to hit even if the batter guesses right.
Exactly, why practice another pitch that’s likely to get hit hard while he’s trying to develop it when he’s so successful with what he already has. Especially playing for the Phillies when every start matters. There are a lot of other players that are good examples of this, too.