SIERA Topic

Posted by Jtpsops on 8/22/2016 1:40:00 PM (view original):
This is one of my issues though - the saber crowd seems to write off anything they don't like as luck.

I get that a K is better than a ball in play if you're a pitcher. But the high K pitchers are getting hit more than Britton this year. Miller's having a great year, but is still allowing more hits than Britton. You would probably say Miller has been unlucky in some capacity when really, hitters are just finding a way to put better swings on his pitches overall than they are on Britton's pitches.

Britton throws one of the best pitches in the majors that is designed to induce swings and misses or weak contact. And it accomplishes just that. So I don't see how that's luck, especially if a pitcher has a semi-competent infield defense behind him.
I'm not saying he has been lucky, I'm just leaving open the possibility. It's 50 innings. Sure it's possible that Britton has, just this season, developed the ability to induce weak contact better than any other pitcher in baseball by a significant margin and it will continue.

It's also possible that it isn't actually a skill he posses but instead a function of the sample size.
8/22/2016 3:25 PM
Actually saw something last week on Britton's ability to induce soft contact. According to Statcast, he doesn't. He actually allows one of the hardest average exit velocities in the majors. But because the hitters' launch angle against him is so low, the velocity doesn't matter.

8/22/2016 3:31 PM
Posted by bad_luck on 8/21/2016 12:35:00 AM (view original):
Not at all. I just don't know if inducing weak contact at that rate is a skill that Britton developed this year or if it's just a fluke.
As I suspect you know, or at least presume, this is a skill that Britton has always had at a fairly high level. In 2014 he led the league in soft contact and was 10th in hard contact. In 2015 he was 4th in hard contact and got the most soft contact again. And this year he's 4th in soft contact and up to first in hard contact. The overall numbers have been getting a little bit better year over year, but his pitching style has been changing too, so it's possible those are real gains.

The simplest change has been that he's throwing harder every year as he gets more accustomed to 1-inning appearances. The other thing is that he's recognized that he can throw more pitches below the strike zone with his amount of sink. He's throwing fewer strikes every season, and this year has gotten to the point that he's one of only 2 pitchers in baseball who throws fewer than 40% of his pitches for strikes. So I would imagine both of those things contribute to drawing weaker contact.
8/22/2016 4:49 PM
I actually didn't know that. I hadn't looked up his prior contact rates.
8/22/2016 4:52 PM
Britton has been a full-time closer for 3 seasons now. In all 3 seasons his soft and hard contact rates have been at elite levels and his groundball rate has been almost historically elite. In 2014 and this year that has resulted in great BABIP against numbers. In 2015 he had career-best K and walk rates but in spite of similar other peripherals his BABIP was below league average. I'd say that 2015 is the outlier here and he should have had an elite ERA, rather than just a very good one, starting last year. I do think his HR/FB rate this year has been lucky, and he probably should have given up a few more runs on HRs. But I think an ERA in the range of 1.2 to 1.5 would be a reasonable representation of how well he's been pitching the past 2 seasons, and his combined ERA of 1.32 is right in that range.

The one thing I will say, as a fan, is that it did seem that last year a lot of the damage against Britton was done over a few periods when he seemed to have arm fatigue for a week or so at a time (3-4 appearances) and he was starting his pitches up in the zone and they were sinking down into the heart instead of starting them center-cut and having them sink to the bottom of the zone. So he may have at least partially earned his seemingly somewhat unlucky BABIP by failing to maintain conditioning. I haven't seen any of that this year.
8/22/2016 11:17 PM
In addition to looking at K rates, it might be informative to look at contact rates: 71.5 in 2014, 67.4 in 2015, 60.8 in 2016 (for some reason I can't type percentage signs right now, not sure what's up with that...) But basically, even if he's not striking more guys out, he's getting more swings and misses. This really has a lot to do with the number of strikes thrown that I referenced earlier, though. His contact rate on balls in the strike zone has been fairly constant over the 3 seasons. He's just throwing fewer strikes and continuing to get away with that by virtue of having the single nastiest pitch in baseball.
8/22/2016 11:35 PM
And that's the key. He knows he can throw fewer strikes and get good results. It was the same with Koji a few years ago - everything seemed to be a change or splitter that broke down and out of the zone. I know those pitches can look tempting, but I've always wondered why hitters don't just go up and take until they get to 2 strikes - there's a less than 50% chance each pitch will be in the zone.
8/23/2016 10:32 AM
Heck if the batters don't make you get it in the strike zone, why would you try? It is not as simple as getting MLB hitters to chase pitches that look tempting etc. May look easy but it isn't. Koji in particular was very good at getting ahead of hitters by throwing quality strikes (great command). Get into 'pitcher's counts' a lot, you can make batters chase those tempting pitches. Pitchers that get behind in the counts a lot, have a hard time making MLB hitters chase. So you have to have really good command of your other pitches, in order to get the hitters to chase a split-finger fastball (or whatever). Despite all the debate about various pitches pitchers throw and how hard they hard throw, the most important pitch is still strike 1!

8/24/2016 9:26 AM
◂ Prev 12
SIERA Topic

Search Criteria

Terms of Use Customer Support Privacy Statement

© 1999-2024 WhatIfSports.com, Inc. All rights reserved. WhatIfSports is a trademark of WhatIfSports.com, Inc. SimLeague, SimMatchup and iSimNow are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts, Inc. Used under license. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.