How Bad Are First Pitch Strikes?

And the Pitch Takes chart looks like a nearly random distribution to me. With a sub-.300 OBP and a near-random Take plot – I think the jury is still out on Kouz’s eye. Look at how many first pitches he took dead center. All this says to me is that if he can recognize that the pitch is close on the first pitch, he takes a hack – it’s just that he doesn’t recognize that the pitch is close all that often.

I think there’s a lot of guesswork by Kouz.

The most interesting thing, I thought, was the illustration of baseball’s fundamental battle. Batter v. Pitcher. Head to head. Especially here.

He’s right in that first pitch strikes are very bad for batters, and that the good ones don’t let it happen often.

That’s a strange observation at first glance. How can they not let it happen? Other than recognizing a first pitch outside the zone and not swinging at it, there isn’t a whole lot the hitter can do. But there are other factors that will affect the pitcher like fatigue, how early/late in the game it is, is it a close game or not, how “on his game” does the pitcher feel, are there men on base or not, the batter’s scouting report, the hitter’s past performance against the pitcher etc. And, I think, “good hitters” (Frank Thomas would be a terrific example) are those that are good at understanding these variables, adjust their expectations and look for a specific pitch.

But, that’s only a start. (And here, I think, is the root of that poster’s query.) All of this skill is for naught if the hitter can’t drive a pitch once he gets what he’s looking for. In my opinion, this is where the A’s have suffered for the last few years. You know way better than me, of course, the lack of high OPS and wOBA players. If I had to guess, the three players with highest OPS in recent years would be Thomas, Cust and Bradley (for the period that the world wasn’t crashing down). I don’t know that it’s the philosophy that’s faulty. We just haven’t had healthy, productive players who are essential to its success. This is also apparent in success of both Sox and the Yankees (though getting to dictate your own strike zone may have something to do with it, too).

I think this also explains your surprise at the relatively low positive correlation with Z-Swing % (contact with pitches in the strike zone doesn’t necessarily translate to success) and the discrepancy in the Z-Contact% v. O-contact% (because the batter decides whether he can drive a pitch or not regardless of whether it’s in the strike zone or not). This confirms what I have thought about for a while now about hitting in general. It feels like the good hitters know their abilities and play to that strength. Of course, it helps to be able to hit a ball far. But, the decision to figure out which pitch to hit so that it will travel the farthest is different for every player or, at least, types of players (for example, Lefty sluggers liking the lower pitches on the inside half). This, then, begs the question “Does the strike zone feel arbitrary to them?” and, more importantly, “Does it become secondary to them in relation to whether they think the pitch is hittable or not?”

Clearly, for Jack Cust, it is secondary. He just doesn’t touch pitches unless he thinks he can drive them. For him, it’s a higher priority than whether the pitch is a strike or not; thus the high number of called strike 3s. This brings me to your excellent comparison.

The team leader in least first pitch strikes last year? The ultra-patient Jack
Cust.

A note of caution: This does not imply causation. There’s no way of knowing if better offenses are better because they swing less, or that since they’re better, they get fewer good pitches to hit.

I was positively giddy. And not just at the mention of “Correlation doesn’t imply Causation.” Boy, that is a loaded observation though, isn’t it? Just ponder that for a second. The fact the you are a selective (good) hitter serves to make you a more selective (better) hitter (by virtue of getting fewer first pitch strikes). Is that incredible or what? This is the sort of thing that Cust boo-ers just can’t seem to appreciate.

I also agree with dwishinsky below about wanting to see the charts broken down for high wOBA hitters vs. low wOBA hitters. Even though I think it’s a great illustrator for 2010 A’s, the Cust example suffers a small sample size. What would be even better is a comparison of Playoff teams against non-Playoff teams. Since you don’t have to be really good to make the playoffs, we might see some noise but it might be insightful nonetheless. Think what crazy things we’d see if we only looked at the playoffs.

Anyhow, thanks for a riveting post. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Manny Ramirez used to do that too. They can afford to do that because they can hit whatever they want to. So it just makes sense for them to simplify the game and sit on a pitch.

As for Pujols, he knows you’re not foolhardy or brave enough to keep throwing him hanging curveballs, so he just eliminates that pitch from consideration.

Came back just in time to dish out yet another rec for Dan. Life is so cruel sometimes.

Is this much different between AL and NL?

Pitchers actually swing at more first pitches than even A’s do. They look at 68.5% and swing (or bunt) at 31.5%

But that first pitch strike we don’t know much about. Look at elcroata’s chart. There’s a big diff between a called strike and swung at strike. I bet you the swung at strikes tend to be the worse hitters (see: Kouzmanoff) whereas the better hitters are taking strikes. It’d be nice to see that split and see (if I suspect) the very different results that come after that. Right now we’re blinded to those results, we just see negative correlation with going down 0-1, but those aren’t all created equally.