Matt Cain Isn’t That Unique After All
Last week, when I suggested that history showed that pitchers with low HR/FB rates, even over long stretches of time, weren’t able to sustain those marks going forward, one of the more popular responses was that Cain is simply unique. There are theories about his fastball movement, his location, or simply a decision on his part to trade fewer home runs for more walks by not leaving pitches over the heart of the plate, even in hitter’s counts. The more I look into this, though, the less it seems likely that Cain’s low HR/FB rate is something unique to him, and more likely that it’s something unique to the organization for which he plays.
Since 2002, Cain does have the lowest HR/FB ratio of any starting pitcher with at least 500 innings pitched in the big leagues. Fourth on that list? Tim Lincecum. Ninth? Jason Schmidt. 17th? Noah Lowry. 22nd? Barry Zito. Russ Ortiz is 37th and Kirk Rueter is 39th, which means that seven of the top 39 pitchers on the list have thrown a significant amount of innings during that time frame for San Francisco.
If we lowered the bar for innings pitched, we’d find even more examples of Giants’ pitchers limiting their home runs on fly balls while pitching for San Franccisco:
Brett Tomko – 378 innings, 7.9% HR/FB
Matt Morris – 344 innings, 8.9% HR/FB
Livan Hernandez – 216 innings, 9.0% HR/FB
Jerome Williams – 276 innings, 9.6% HR/FB
You’ll notice that all four of those guys are right-handed pitchers, and as such, they should get a similar benefit from AT&T Park’s dimensions to Cain. Toss in Schmidt, Lincecum, and Ortiz, and even without Cain, the Giants have had a long track record of right-handed pitchers posting low HR/FB rates, even ones of dubious quality otherwise.
Upon noticing this, my first assumption was that we’re just underestimating the park factor in San Francisco. We know it’s one of the toughest places for left-handed batters to hit a home run, but with so many mediocre RHPs posting low HR/FB rates for San Francisco, I figured we’d see a pretty dramatic home/road split, which would explain a good chunk of the numbers. But we don’t see that.
The Giants have used 23 right-handed starting pitchers in both home and road games since 2002 (a few only started games either in SF or away from the bay area), and collectively, that group has thrown nearly 5,800 innings. Their HR/FB rate is lower at home (8.0%), but their road number (9.1%) would still be among the lowest in the league. The park certainly is a factor, but given that the Giants have coaxed nearly 3,000 innings of low HR/FB rates from their right-handed starting pitchers on the road over the last nine years, it becomes tough to argue that a park factor is the only thing going on here.
So now, I’m left wondering if there’s an organizational factor that might be in play. Perhaps Dave Righetti is teaching pitchers on the Giants staff to pitch in such a way that limits his staff’s home run rate? This is certainly a possibility, but with most pitching coach influences, the changes they make are transferable. Joel Pineiro didn’t stop being a ground ball pitcher once leaving Dave Duncan‘s tutelage in St. Louis for instance, but guys like Tomko, Ortiz and Hernandez weren’t able to repeat their home run limiting success elsewhere.
It’s unfortunate that Jason Schmidt blew out his arm before he could have a significant career in Los Angeles, as he would have served as an interesting test case for this issue. He was Matt Cain before Cain came along, with the same approach and similar results. His performance outside of Righetti’s influence and AT&T Park might have given us some additional clarity about how these effects carry over once a pitcher leaves.
What does seem clear, though, is that the Giants – not Cain specifically – are the outlier here. Since 2002, their team HR/FB rate is 8.6% against a league average of 10.4%, putting them over two standard deviations from the mean. Park factors bring them back to the edge of being an explainable phenomenon just through random chance, but it’s interesting to note that there’s no extreme outlier on the other side, as the Reds have given up the highest team HR/FB rate since 2002, but after applying a park factor, they’re well under the two standard deviation expectation.
It’s an issue that still requires more research, but I think the evidence should encourage us to study the Giants as a team more than Cain as the great exception to the rules.
Dave, great stuff.
Can you show the GB, OFFB, IFFB, LD frequencies for the Giants (broken down as Home/Batters, Home/Pitchers, Away/Batters, Away/Pitchers)?
I’d like to see if there is bias in recording the data.
Interested in OFFB and IFFB in particular. There may be bias in the data, but perhaps the low HR/FB for RHP is due to high percentage of FB being in the infield. Or that could be the skill that the Giants’ coaching staff are able to instill on right-handed starters.
From 2002-2010, Giants pitchers’ HR/FB is 8.0% at home (lowest in the majors by far), and 9.3% on the road (lowest in the majors).
Over same period, Giants batters’ HR/FB is 8.6% at home (5th lowest in the majors), and 9.8 % on the road (13th lowest in the majors).
Looks like AT&T suppresses HR/FB, but there also seems to be something going on with the Giants’ pitching staff.
2006-2010, SF pitchers, home:
38% FB%, 19.3% LD%, 10.2% IFFB%, 42.7% GB%
2006-2010, SF pitchers, road:
40% FB%, 19.2% LD%, 10.8% IFFB%, 40.8% GB%
A slight trade-off from FB to GB while at home, but that’s one of the easiest things to score, and not really subject to much bias. LD% being equal at home/road makes likelihood of scoring bias unlikely.
Dave, good stuff, thanks.
I agree that if there was a bias, we’d see it in a stable FB+LD, but that it would be disproportionate to one or the other (FB or LD). One wouldn’t think there’d be much bias in LD being a GB or not (though possible).
Interesting..
This seems to be consistent with one of the theories I saw. Home HR/FB is the product of park factors, and his road HR/FB is due to a bit of luck, and those combine to form a low HR/FB. Anyway, it would seem that Cain can maintain a low HR/FB like these pitchers did/have done in their SF tenure.
Fascinating. A question (and I hope it’s not too dumb). There is often a lot of “luck” talk when a pitcher has a low BABiP. Cain has two seasons in a row where his is so low (.267/.254). Could you comment on that please? Can a pitcher like Cain limit his BABiP with his pitching, is it defense or is there other explanations other than luck? Thanks.
Given that he’s an extreme fly ball pitcher, Cain should be expected to post lower than average BABIPs. Not as low as he’s posted the last two years, though.
~0.290 career xbabip using 19% ld% normalization and a 7% “talent” HR/FB
Non-regressed data xBABIP ~ .286 with expected IP, .281 with actual innings pitched. Well above his career mark
But then again, it seems that the gap is too significant to just call it luck. I’d bet that Righetti does have some role in this, whether minor or major.
Two standard deviations? And assuming each hit to be an independent event then we’d expect an approximate normal distribution with this large a sample size.
30 MLB teams. Chance each is 2 standard deviations out on HR/FB rate is ~4.5%. Average number that far off is 0.68 teams.
Note that the period of time and number of innings should be accounted for in the deviation. EXACTLY one team that far off normal to one side or the other is probably the most likely single possible result.
It think luck does a FINE job of explaining this.
the % for 2 std devs under would be half this (2.2%). And the explanation presumably would not be luck any more than the explanation of Fenway’s unique ability to produce doubles is luck.
The probability of a given team being off by 2 sigma is EXACTLY double the chance of one team being high by 2 sigma.
Park factors are accounted for, read the article, it’s 2 sigma after park factors, and luck is more than adequate to explain this.
We’d be just as impressed by “what are they doing wrong” if some team were off by 2 sigma the other way. The “coincidence” that needs to be explained is someone being off by 2 sigma. Since he examined both high and low the chance of a coincidence of that magnitude is based on being off by either high or low.
It’s actually worse than that, because the period of performance is non-random, but chosen to get an interesting result, and the stat being looked at and reported on is non-random. There’s a REASON that in most studies something has to be off by AT LEAST 3 sigma before it’s considered particularly significant. Look at a large collection of random numbers and you’ll find FAR less likely things than this result.
Matt Cain hr/offb% is normal. High iffb rates skew hr/fb
That’s just not true.
Dave,
While his HR/OFFB% does not exactly accord towards regression, it is much closer to the league average HR/OFFB%. I know either you or Appelman showed that the aggregate differential between HR/FB and HR/OFFB was insignificant, but how about in specific regard to extreme IFFB pitchers. Cain’s career HR/OFFB% w/ park factors is close to 9%, and over the past 2 seasons, it’s around 9.5%. obiously not in the 10.5-15.5 range, but closer than 7%
Once you decide to remove IFFBs, you can’t still use the 10.5% baseline. You have to remove IFFBs for all pitchers, so the league average goes way up.
That’s a given and understood, but I thought the league average HR/OFFB% was 11.6%, or about 1% point higher…..
Not saying something isnt up, by the way, just that mark cain’s HR/OFFB% is statistically closer than his HR/FB towards the league mean. Granted, HR/OFFB% also has less variance…
PPS, i greatly enjoyed the article, so I hope I am not coming off as a contrarian jerk here.
One more thought.
I do not have my data on mobile, but how many STDEV away from the league mean is the Giants pitching staff from HR/OFFB? Is it still 2+?
Just letting someone else (anyone) get in a word edgewise…
er I should say his hroffb rate is normall given AT&T park factors
It definitely helps to pitch so many games in that park, does anyone remember that ball Kinsler hit off the top of the center field wall in the world series? Being that a lot of LH batters should hit him well, those balls get tracked down under the 421 sign.
that’s the forcefield…
Just looked at Lincecum’s movement here.
http://baseballmusings.com/?p=64179
so an explanation i ran across at mccoveychronicles points out that the Giants typically show a high BB/9 rate as well. it stands to reason that if you’re willing to walk batters then you can probably avoid a lot of hard hit fly balls. you can probably also create some effect in babip as well.
i’ll leave it to the smart people to figure out if the data supports or negates this hypothesis.
Well, in 2010, 100% of the RHs on the staff (both rotation and pen) were “stuff” guys.
That depnds on how you want to define “stuff” pitching. Cain and Mota, while perhaps pitching in a “stuff” style, did not get the strikeouts you’d expect from “stuff” guys, while Romo got got the K’s but uses a decidedly finesse style.
Something that may be part of this, and it may go back to Righetti, is looking at how catchers call a game. I noticed a clear difference between Molina and Posey last year, Similiar ERA’s arrived at in different fashion, Molina gave up significantly more walks, but much lower ISO and HR%, Posey seemed much more aggressive in the strike zone, but gave up more hard hit balls on hitter counts.
Ok, with counting stats extrapolated to 1461 innings-
Opposing hitters with Molina catching: .240/.321/.363 128 HR, 628 BB, 1263 K
Opposing hitters with Posey catching: .233/.297/.378 148 HR, 448 BB, 1331 K
That walk total with Posey would have been the second lowest in the league, and k/bb ratio would have been the best.
part might be lincecum’s rocky start and subsequent recovery. not all of it obviously, but he contributes a couple hundred innings at more than a strike out per inning.
The three starters that saw a lot of starts for both catchers (Lincecum, Zito, Cain) all had better overall numbers with Molina, Zito especially. Posey benefited from catching MadBum instead of Wellemeyer, and did much better with the bullpen. Lincecum’s bad stretch in August came with Posey catching.
Oh, Cain, 14 HR in 429 PA with Posey Catching, 7 HR in 413 PA with Molina. 25 BB and 94 K in those 429 PA with Posey, 35 and 71 with Molina.
Side topic, but mentioned by the above commenter, he left out Sanchez, who Molina was never able to figure out how to catch, Sanchez has had a horrible ERA with Molina every year, that is why Whiteside became Sanchez’s personal catcher, he knew how to get the best out of Sanchez, and Posey appear able too.
The gist of this is that Molina’s numbers would be much, much worse had Whiteside not been Sanchez’s personal catcher.
“part might be lincecum’s rocky start and subsequent recovery. not all of it obviously, but he contributes a couple hundred innings at more than a strike out per inning”
except that his start wasnt rocky at all. he had a great first couple months. his worst stretch was in august after molina was long gone and posey had already taken over the catcher duties
Even if this were true, the effect predates Molina’s tenure with the team.
What if they’re pitching to Willie Mays park, but this approach persists on the road?
That seems reasonable to me. They’re approach is probably shaped in some part by their surroundings, and it’s probably not wise to try to change up approach/mechanics/whatever every start depending on where you play, so you find one that works well for ~50% of your starts and just go with it.
With unbalanced schedules, I wonder if the fact that the NL West hasn’t exactly been flush with LH power hitters lately (other than Adrian Gonzalez) is also a factor. 2nd best after Adrian is probably the downslope of Luis Gonzalez’s career.
With so many games against same-division teams, a lack of opposing LH power hitters could account for some of the deviation. And some of the better LH power hitters like Helton and Hawpe are hamstrung when not playing at Coors.
I’m probably wrong and its probably easy to prove how wrong I am, just a passing thought.
Actually, it’s possible that you’ve pointed the way towards another possible explanation: NL West park factors. Post-humidor, Coors has changed somewhat into a place that encourages run-scoring in ways other than just homers. That expansive outfield allows for a lot of XBHs, but it also means more flyballs can get tracked down. (In fact, I’m giggling right now thinking about surefire doubles and triples that ended up in Andres Torres’ back pocket last year.) Add to that Chavez Ravine and Mammoth Caves in San Diego (and of course AT&T), and you’re looking at a division that is definitely skewed towards low HR/FB. You could test this somewhat by examining other staffs within the division over this time, but you’d still need to bear in mind that the Giants have consistently been an above-average staff throughout the decade.
I’m less sold on the RHP/LHP dichotomy, if only because the few lefty starters the Giants have run out there — mostly Zito and Rueter — were finesse guys that you would expect to get crushed from time to time. The data don’t really bear that out.
In fact, I think any analysis would need to go a bit deeper in terms of explaining each pitcher’s results. Dave points out that Livan, Ortiz, Jerome Williams and other ex-Giants “lost” their homer-suppressing “skill” after leaving the organization — but in each case there are explanations for why such a diminution oc skill occurred. Whether those pitchers were already trending downward (Livo) or whether they completely lost their effectiveness (Ortiz, Williams) or whether they got injured (Schmidt) or whatnot, singling out their decreased HR/FB without the larger context of their overall performance seems a little suspect to me.
One other small bone to pick: I adore Matt Cain to an unhealthy degree, and sing his praises every chance I get. But he is not and likely will never be Jason Schmidt. For a brief stretch, Schmidt was the best and most dominant (two separate things) pitcher in the National League. Purely in terms of skillset, Schmidt was much more akin to Lincecum than to Cain — his changeup was every bit as good, and his command was actually better than Tiny Tim’s. It was a brief period, but man…when that dude was healthy, he was absolutely phenomenal.
So glad you’ve been working on this stuff, Dave — thanks!
Agree. Cain & Schmidt were much different. Anyone claiming otherwise isnt watching the games. Even a stat head ought to be able to look at the K/9 and swing & miss % during their peek years and conclude that.
Perhaps the reason of the Giants lower than league road HR/FB has a lot to do with the ballparks in their division. Like AT&T Park, Dodger Stadium and Petco Park are perennially give up the among the stingiest parks in baseball. The humidors are working in Coors Field, it’s been about league average for HRs over the last few years. Chase Field is the only NL West park that’s above average in terms of homer friendliness.
HR/FB factors by park in NL west:
Coors Field: 1.20
Chase Field: 1.11
Dodger Stadium: 1.012
AT%T Park: 0.92
PetCo Park: 0.82
These are aggregate PF’s for 4years, but they ignore handedness of pitchers/batters
So yeah, Dodger stadium is not that cavernous in aggregate, and Coors Field’s humidor doesnt keep the ball in the yard. Granted, it’s no Citizen’s Bank (1.25 HF/FB index), but it’s still T-4th in HR/FB index
I believe Dodger Stadium suppresses double and triples, but not HR.
Bill James 3-year stats for NL West parks from 2011 Handbook:
Chase: LHB-HR = 102, RHB-HR = 106
Coors: LHB-HR = 128, RHB-HR = 121
Dodger: LHB-HR = 101, RHB-HR = 87
Petco: LHB-HR = 59, RHB-HR = 96
AT&T: LHB-HR = 85, RHB-HR = 102
So the extremes here are Coors, both way, RHB in Dodger, LHB in Petco and AT&T.
And yes, slight suppression on doubles and huge suppression on triples in Dodger Stadium.
obsessivegiantscompulsive, are those HR factors or HR/FB factors. I have a feeling they are the former, not the latter.
I wonder the degree that this plays into the Giants organizational philosophy now or in the future.
For example, the theory goes that premium free agent hitters do not want to play for the Giants because of the impact the park has on their numbers. You’d think that it would be a desirable place for pitchers to want to come (I realize the Giants have not been in the market for starting pitching the last 2-3 years).
It seems logical that the Giants as an organization would want to focus on developing their own hitters (since FA hitters avoid ATT) and rely more on the FA market for starting pitchers thinking it would be attractive to them. However, the opposite seems to be true……the Giants have focused on developing young pitching (to their great benefit) and there does not seem to be much buzz about FA pitchers wanting to come to ATT.
Thoughts?
For whatever reason, the Giants went through an embarrassingly long dry spell in terms of preparing homegrown hitters — to the extent that it kind of became axiomatic that they just couldn’t do it. On the other hand, the presence of people like Dick Tidrow in the organization has meant that they have been able to consistently turn out great young pitching. So I think it’s more the case that the team has just decided to play to its strengths in terms of player development.
True….and if you recall, the Giants had a very “anti-draft” attitude. The thinking was that money was better spent on mediocre “proven” MLB talent than on unproven “potential”. The Giants draft picks often came with the dreaded “S” word….signability. If you recall, they signed Michael Tucker in ’02 or ’03 and if they had waited one more day they would not have had to surrender a draft pick….but the pick just didn’t mean anything to them then.
The reason there was such a long dry spell is because of two factors.
When you are winning, as they have for much of Sabean’s time as GM, you have lousy draft picks, even in the first round, so the Giants have focused their best picks on starting pitching for the most part. So first, they are limited by the low odds that late first round picks have of becoming a good player, and second, they have focused almost all those picks on pitching. Both those factors have contributed greatly to their long dry spell in developing hitters.
I would also add that they also appeared to not have a lot of ability to identify good hitters until John Barr joined, but when the odds of finding good players are so low after the first round, it is hard to tell lack of ability vs. lack of opportunity definitively.
I would also add the late Pat Dobson, plus LAD’s Vulture (Ron Perranowski?) was part of Sabean’s core insiders as well, who contributed to their pitching evaluation. But Tidrow has to be the man, he went in and fixed up Bumgarner in early 2010 season, when people since mid-2009 season to 2010 spring training couldn’t help Bumgarner figure out his mechanical problems.
Joe S., the anti-draft sentiment was strictly a fan reaction to the Giants moves. However, it was a simple matter that at that point, they needed a starting OF or two (I think they signed Hammonds that year too), and to get the money to pay for Tucker, Sabean signed him a day early to give up the draft pick.
But people cry about that pick and call the Giants anti-draft because they don’t realize that picks in the backend of the first round, on average, become good players at roughly a 10% success rate (which my draft study found). So all the Giants gave up was a low chance lottery ticket in order to fill a need at the MLB level. At least they didn’t draft somebody and signed them to a low bonus instead, as many teams have done before.
At a 10% success rate, that means that after 10 years of winning pennant contending baseball, the average team will have found ONE good ballplayer via the draft using their pick in the first round, on average. You don’t rebuild very well when finding only one good first round draft pick every ten years (unless that one is Albert Pujols or something).
At 10% success rate, the Giants essentially traded a low level prospect to the Royals for around $1.4M, money they used to sign Tucker. Teams regularly trade low level prospects for journeyman players like Tucker all the time.
The bigger issue was that the ownership, meaning Magowan, was unwilling to pony up $1.4M so that the Giants could retain the draft pick. That’s why Magowan is out and Neukom is in – his first statements noted that Sabean will bring him all good baseball deals and Neukom will decide whether the Giants can get that money to do the deal – and Sabean is still around.
My theory is that the Giants believe that pitching and defense wins, so therefore you should control the supply of your key success factors and go outside for the rest. Research supports this.
Both BP and THT has studied how successful teams do well in the playoffs. Both, using different methdologies, came to the same conclusion, that pitching and defense provides competitive advantage in the playoffs, whereas offense provides no advantage at all. So the smart team should focus on pitching, to use business langauge, so that they control the supply for their competitive advantage, then go outside for the parts they cannot get internally.
What most people don’t realize is that when you have pitching as good as the Giants, major league best basically, you can still have one of the worse offensive teams in the NL and still win a lot of games, as they did in 2009. Develop an average offense, and you are one of the winningest teams in the majors. And if Posey, Sandoval, Belt turn out to be as good as advertised, with that as the heart of their lineup for years to come, they could have one of the best offenses around as well.
I wonder if BP still wants Sabean fired – that was the subject of their 2010 annual, they vehemently wanted him fired. I found that rather odd because their team design appears to follow almost to a T the formula they described for creating a team maximized for success in the playoffs, i.e. going deep, that they wrote about in one of their books. Not maximized in terms of winning World Series every year, nothing provides that advantage, but max in terms of having the team ingredients – high K/9, high WRXL, high FRAA – that has given teams an advantage in the playoffs, according to their research. Instead of a whipping boy, Sabean should be their poster child.
Does it make me petty that can’t wait for 2011 BP to see what they say about Sabean?
Towards the end of the season when it began to look like the Giants would make the playoffs BP announced they were “retiring” their secret sauce formula for predicting the post season, it was an open secret that it made the Giants a prohibitive favorite in every matchup. Likewise the Bill James formula predicted the Giants.
I remember even in late 2009 thinking, and reading, that the Giants may not make the playoffs but if they did they were a team that would surprise people because of the pitching.
@Obsessive: You make a number of fine points, but I’d just like to state that while the chances of late 1st rounders becoming “good” players may be 10%, the chance of Michael Tucker being a good player was approximately 0% at the time of that signing.
Favorite memory of Tucker: Eric Gagne once threw him an eye-high fastball at around 98. The ball was on the outer half of the plate, but Tucker nevertheless jacknifed out of the way, then started threatening Gagne. To which the beefy canuck responded by dropping his glove and strolling purposefully towards the plate. For a brief moment, I thought I was about to witness the first time a pitcher ever charged a hitter — and as much as I love the Giants (and loathe the Dodgers), there was definitely a large part of me wishing Tucker would get decked.
Say what you will — the Giants needed an outfielder, the Giants signed Tucker because he was one of the few people Bonds really clicked with at that point, etc. — the fact remains that Michael Tucker’s signing was kind of a definitive “Bad Sabean/Bad Organizational Philosophy” move, and that will always be his legacy in orange and black.
I am of the opinion that this is organizational, perhaps from the pitching coach, but at minimum, this is the way the Giants handle pitchers.
First, Rob Neyer once analyzed Kirk Rueter’s stats when he was working for ESPN, about 5-6 years ago, and found that his approach to a batter changes with the on-base situation. Basically, it appeared to Neyer from the stats, that Rueter started nibbling big-time when there was a runner on base, resulting in a lot more walks but much less homers. It was the article where he compared Rueter’s success vs. Detroit’s Cornejo. So that is evidence that one pitcher did focus on limiting homeruns in some way for the Giants.
DrB noted previously in this Cain debate that he wonders if this might be an organizational emphasis. This Neyer article gives some empirical evidence of that, perhaps someone at Fangraphs can duplicate that analysis for these other Giants pitchers, and see if they are handling batters differently depending on the runners on situation.
But given these two bits of information, plus the data in the article, it does appear that the Giants do love to limit the long ball.
In any case, I think I can speculate on an answer to the question in the article regarding why this effect does not last when players move to other teams: the pitchers are handled by the catcher, and the catcher gets his guidance from his pitching coach. If the catcher and/or pitcher deviates from the edict of the pitching coach, particularly before this season (i.e. before GIants success), do you think the pitching coach of the new team will say, “Oh, that’s OK, you go ahead and do what you want.” I don’t think that will happen in a million years, the pitching coach will want you to do what he wants done, you owe me 10 laps at the next practice and money at the next kangaroo court. He is not going to change his mind just because the Giants do it.
Plus, I doubt the Giants would openly discuss this with the pitchers that this is how they want things done because it limits homeruns. The pitchers will be expected to do what they are guided to do by the catcher. This is how the Giants do it, do it now and give me 10 laps. The pitcher should be focused on ” throw ball to catcher’s glove” and probably don’t give it a second thought.
I think that the pitchers who should be examined for their post-Giants performances are the two with the most success afterward, Russ Ortiz and Livan Hernandez. Hernandez is particularly good because there is a significant pre-Giants period as well as post-Giants, where he was pretty effective. Ortiz’s stats from his last years should not be included because by that point, his ACL was ready to go and then did. One could also look at Shawn Estes, but he wasn’t that good in his post-Giants years.
I would also suggest that catchers be studied as well, but there really hasn’t been a Giants catcher who had a second life, except for AJ, and he was only here for a year, don’t think he had a lot of respect for the Giants, though I guess you never know.
Lastly, I disagree that Jason Schmidt was the previous Matt Cain. Schmidt had the ability to strike out a lot of batters and was dominating for a number of years. Cain has never had similar domination in that regard (never been over 9 K/9 and haven’t been above 8 since first season I think), but rather he dominates by limiting base hits plus homers, and now appears to be starting to limit base-on-balls too.
And he’s at the point where he’s just about almost has enough IP that he would have proven, per TangoTiger’s statement that a pitcher needs 6 full years of starting to accumulate enough IP to significantly state, that his BABIP is controllable by him. He would have to have a pretty horrible BABIP in 2011 to fall back anywhere close to the .300 BABIP mean. He would have to give up roughly 295 hits in 800 AB, assuming his other career rates hold for HR, K’s, SF, a .369 BABIP to get to .300 BABIP, 258 hits to .290 BABIP, and anything under 222 hits would leave him under .280 BABIP. His career high was 206 in 2008, but has roughly given up 180-190 per season otherwise.
Schmidt’s numbers:
1,003 IP, 3.24 BB/9, 8.97 K/9, 7.6% HR/FB, .272 BABIP, 3.35 ERA, 3.76 xFIP
Cain’s numbers:
1,096 IP, 3.37 BB/9, 7.44 K/9, 7.0% HR/FB, .266 BABIP, 3.45 ERA, 4.43 xFIP
Yes, he got more strikeouts, but everything else was almost exactly the same. Just like Cain, he posted well below average BABIP and HR/FB rates over a long stretch of time.
Wow, never realized that Schmidt also had such a low BABIP, bad assumption on my part, yes, you are right, my apologies.
I’m still not sold, thanks to the gargantuan difference in their xFIP. Perhaps this is partially due to the evolution of statistical thinking, but I doubt you could’ve found anyone in the stathead community in 2003 or 2004 (when Schmidt finished 2nd and 4th in Cy voting, respectively) that would even dream of discussing whether Schmidt was some kind of outlier or whether he was just lucky in his success. He was absolutely dominant. In particular, his 2003 (with a 4.5/1 K/BB) was far filthier than anything I expect Cain to ever match.
Perhaps I’m looking at this too broadly — perhaps your point is just that they had strikingly similar (and generally anomalous) BABIPs and HR/FBs. If that’s the case, sorry to be so contrary. But in terms of their skillsets, and their overall levels of dominance, I don’t think they’re that similar.
What is the road HR/fly ratio for opposing RHPs in AT&T park? (Well, I suppose this will be distorted by the quality of Giants’ hitters.) In any event, it seems like a data point to look at, keeping in mind that Giants’ hitters may not be league average.
I would also speculate that pitchers with home parks that have unusual dimension factors can learn to pitch in a way that minimizes HRs per flyball at home.
good idea! an intriguing prospect if Righetti has indeed figured out how to limit homeruns without changing flyball tendencies. maybe he can be the dave duncan of flyball pitchers! as always, great work.
Yeah, I was going to say, Schmidt missed *way* more bats than Cain. His ERAs were completely supported by peripherals.
Dave,
I will give you props for keeping an open mind and not closing this subject down.
I believe this is more of an organizational philosophy that probably starts with Tidrow and Sabean, but Righetti has done a good job of implementing at the MLB level. Ever wonder why Righetti has stayed on as pitching coach through 3 different managers?
I recently read some comments Dick Tidrow made in an interview about how he and Sabean scouted Bumgarner. The think that convinced them was his ability to command the fastball on both sides of the plate. Same thing with Cain. The first step is all this is fastball command and the acquisition of that type of pitcher. Once you have that, you can afford to stubbornly keep the ball away from the middle of the plate where it can be crushed. If you walk a batter or two, no biggie, you avoid the longball and get the next batter.
I believe that when we know more about PitchFx data, we will find that most HR’s are not due to lazy flyballs hit off good pitches that happen to carry over the fence, but instead are hit off “mistakes” and are crushed.
Can’t prove it, but I believe that’s the key to all this.
If this is some organizational secret sauce, it sheds some new light on the delayed promotion of Buster Posey last year, and adds some support to Giants claims that his catching skills needed more tuteledge under Steve Decker at Fresno. Highly speculative, but fun conspiracy theory.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory at all. I think the Giants were quite open about that definitely being the reason why Buster was being kept down.
The fans didn’t accept this explanation because 1. They were fixated on Molina’s horrible offense and 2. They’ve been taught by sabermetrics that catcher ERA doesn’t exist.
I believe catcher ERA does exist, we just haven’t found a way to measure it yet.
From my observations, Buster definitely insists on the pitchers throwing more strikes than Bengie did. I’ve thought this was a good thing, but from some of the data in this thread, it looks like that attitude may have cost the Giants pitchers some extra HR’s allowed.
Dr. B – My conspiracy theory I meant that most analysts have looked past the Giants explaination and suspected service clock manipulation. I’m suggesting that maybe we should have taken the Giants at face value when discussing Posey’s development.
Jason,
There’s a guy named John Klima who runs a scouting blog who wrote up an interview he did with Buster late in the season before a game in LA. He had scouted Buster the previous fall in the Arizona Fall League. I asked him point blank if he thought there was anything to the Giants claim that Buster wasn’t ready to start the season at the MLB level. He replied that while he hadn’t seen Buster in spring training and therefore couldn’t comment on that, he was definitely not ready from a catching standpoint as of the AFL.
There are apparently technical aspects to catching pitchers with premium stuff like the Giants have. He went on to say that he thinks Brian Wilson has the best stuff in baseball and if you or I tried to catch his pitches we would probably get literally killed.
I’m not an expert, but I do think Klima knows his stuff, so I’m running with that. Can’t really argue with the results from the Giants standpoint, huh?
“He went on to say that he thinks Brian Wilson has the best stuff in baseball and if you or I tried to catch his pitches we would probably get literally killed.”
So he’s either (a) prone to hyperbole, or (b) doesn’t know what “literal” means.
I routinely catch some of our HS pitchers, including a couple that threw 88-91.
That scout is not joking.
I’m a pretty good athlete (college player) and catch regularly (pitched in college), and it’s no small task trying to handle some of the hard breaking stuff. Hard sliders and sinkers can be a nightmare (especially to big toes).
I cannot imagine catching upper 90s stuff with movement. ML catchers make it look so easy that the average dude sitting on their couch thinks they could probably do it.
I think Brian Wilson might kill the average stiff trying to catch him. I don;t think people realize how fast upper 90 is and how difficult it is to catch from 55 feet.
I think a lot of people would struggle to catch 80 mph pitches.
My son and his buddy are two rather fast pitchers for their age (10U). It’s amazing how many pitches hit the catcher right in the mask. That would not be unlike the average guy trying to catch a major league closer. I could easily envison pitches hitting them in the mask, chest, shoulder, etc.
I think the same thing about ground balls. A major league grounder would be the equivalent of me hitting a fungo as hard as I can and you fielding it. I often invite people to share in that experience (It’d be fun for me).
These guys are from another planet.
Just a thought, you could compare other SP in AT&T to Giants SP in AT&T. When you compare their HR/RB rate to other NL teams, that is better but not entirely legit because of unbalanced schedules. Other options would be to weight other teams stats by park to get to the Giants weights, or to use only other teams in there division and look at just road game pitching. The for each team you get 4 comparisons. This way batters and park are fixed and just the pitching/fielders (in marginal cases) changes.
oops, replace 4 comparisons with 3 comparisons.
Just realized I forgot my first sentence too.
I *really* like that you posted a follow up, and the way you attacked this.
Great reading all around. I was not a Cain beliver at first but towards the end of the 2009 season I was turning that way. Good to see some documentation to quiet the bashers of his xFIP.
When I saw this headline it immediately screamed troll, but this analysis makes sense given what I have anecdotally seen watching Giants games. Brian Wilson is a good example. He seems willing to aim for a specific spot on the corner throughout the course of an at-bat, not caring if he gets behind or walks someone by missing his spot. He simply refuses to give in and throw a get-it-in pitch until it’s a 3-2 count with the bases loaded. This does seem like a possible organizational emphasis from my observation.
I like that Dave is giving this a second look, and opening his mind to other conclusions, but I would still like to see “pitcher skill” as a variable controlled for. Its possible that the Giants are drafting or signing pitchers that have the skill that Dave is trying to prove doesnt exist. He goes part way by following these pitchers after they left the Giants, but as discussed in the thread last week that bias the data due to natural decline. A more definitive study would look at performance before the Giants acquired them, and then compare to their Giants years. I realize this is complicated by the fact that the Giants have developed most of their pitching internnally, but it would be the only way to control for all variables and support the hypothesis presented here.
Very interesting observation and theory. I think this does explain part of how Matt Cain accomplishes his very low HR/FB ratio. However, I see it as only part of the story.
Here is an ovservation I just recently made. If you look at all the MLB pitchers of the “batted ball data era” (2002-2010) to have pitched at least 1000 innings and sort by GB/FB ratio you find the following.
1) Only 2 of the top 15 of these 85 pitchers in GB/FB ratio (ranging from 3.56 to 1.57) has a HR/FB ratio below 10%.
2) Only 4 of the bottom 15 of these 85 pitchers in GB/FB ratio (ranging from .69 to .95) has a HR/FB ratio above 10%.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=1000&type=2&season=2010&month=0&season1=2002
From this observation I have come to the following therory. Of Pitchers MLB teams think have enough talent to give 1000 or more innings to over the last nine years the FB pitchers as a group have a talent to limit their HR/FB ratios that the GB pitchers as a group do not have.
I believe that if we sort for and sum all pitchers no matter how few their innings with GB/FB ratios of 1.57 or higher and with GB/FB ratios of .95 or lower we will find that the FB pitchers as a group have a lower HR/FB ratio the the GB pitchers as a group. I believe that this will result in the conclusion that their is an actual talent more FB pitchers then GB pitchers tend to have that allows those pitchers with this talent to limit their HR/FB ratio. I believe that those that wish to continue to explain this away as “just luck” will no longer have a leg to stand on.
GRM,
I think that you are absolutely right here. The reason being that if a batter elevates a pitch from a sinkerball pitcher, it is most likely because the pitch didn’t do what the pitcher wanted it to do or go where he wanted it to go, in other words a “mistake” pitch. Therefore, flyballs off GB or sinkerball pitchers that do get up in the air are more likely to be crushed, more likely to be a HR.
In general, flyball pitchers will allow more total HR’s, but not by as wide a margin as they should if HR/FB ratios were all the same. That’s because most HR’s aren’t hit off good pitches they are hit off “mistake” pitches. Very few balls will be hit harder than a sinker that doesn’t sink!
Now, if you have a flyball pitcher who is really good at what he does, like Matt Cain for example, he’s not going to make as many “mistake” pitches so even though he’s a flyball pitcher, he can keep those in the park because the hitter is not making hard contact. He has the added advantage of keeping his BABIP down because non-line drive, non-HR flyballs are much more surely outs than groundballs that find their way between IF’s.
Just looking at the top and bottom 15 is a very limited analysis. It’s just as likely that extreme GB pitchers tend to congregate in smaller/more HR favorable parks while high FB pitchers (particularly ones who last for 1000 IP) tend to play in parks with more expansive outfields. Loading up on a groundball staff is a common strategy for GMs in perceived homer havens.
I’m thinking about organizational philosophies that could suppress home runs, and one in particular jumps out at me. I haven’t looked at pitch f/x data to corroborate this, but is it possible that at an organizational level, the Giants tell their pitchers not to try and get strikeouts by climbing the ladder? That is the easiest way for high K/high FB guys to get burned by the longball. I know Lincecum doesn’t rely on going upstairs to get his strikeouts, and my unresearched opinion that I believe due to nothing other than my own memory from watching a number of his starts is that Cain doesn’t do so, either.
what does this say about matt cain’s ability to maintain a low fb/hr ratio? will he be able to do it as long as he’s on the giants? as long has he has the skills that he does now? is he still just lucky?
even more numbers back this up. I looked up fip-xfip since 02 and the giants have a -.28 and .1 lower than anyone else and they also have a lower e-x then anyone else. I understand why that is true but is there a reason why they also have the 8th lowest e-f? is that park, luck or something else?
dave cameron: I’m not wrong, (even though I proved myself wrong last article when I corrected my math) I’m just right in a different way
I will use that with my wife … “Honey, I’m not wrong, I’m just right in a different way.”
Classic.
We’re all “right in a different way”.
BTW, my mom says everyone is unique. So there.
I give myself credit for staying out of this discussion. Lots of talk and no way to “prove it”. Maybe with 4500 more BF’s, we’ll know more. *wink*
I am not the baseball statistics expert that I am sure many of you are, but you are taking about HR/Flyball ratio being low for Cain and Giants pitchers in general. Isn’t that possibly not due to coaching but due to the “weather” we have here? HR’s need to go far. FB’s don’t need to go as far. Our weather keep balls from flying far, so I would expect a low HR/FB ratio where there is bad weather like San Francisco. I would expect the higher HR/FB ratio to be where balls travel farther.
That would still fall under the umbrella of park effects, and wouldn’t explain the disparity on the road.
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