Are Pitchers Looking Hitters’ Weaknesses, or Avoiding Their Strengths?

One benefit of dwelling in an age the place the wealth of human information is at one’s fingertips is that no curiosity want go unhappy. I used to be simply sitting round questioning idly in regards to the relationship between how hitters get pitched and the way nicely they do in opposition to sure forms of pitches. So I ran a few Baseball Savant searches and performed round in Excel over lunch and ended up with one thing that may certainly have made Henry Chadwick soil his trousers.

Which most likely overstates the impression of those findings, reminiscent of they’re. Considered one of my main takeaways is that Aaron Decide is a preposterously good hitter, which I really feel like all of us knew moving into. Nonetheless, it’s a enjoyable journey to go on, so let’s take it collectively.

Heading into Thursday’s video games, 281 totally different batters had seen 500 or extra pitches this season. I separated these pitches into three totally different classes: fastballs, off-speed, and breaking balls, and took every hitter’s wOBA in opposition to every of these pitch sorts.

Now, if I had been working in a entrance workplace making an attempt to get an edge on an opponent, I’d get extra granular, as a result of pitch classification is a type of issues that doesn’t at all times lend itself to neat categorization. Not solely are sliders totally different from curveballs, however not all sliders are alike. And a few sliders, in actual fact, are extra like cutters, which aren’t breaking balls in any respect. Then there’s sequencing, and most vital of all, location. (Pitching is like the actual property market in two respects: First, location is of paramount significance. Second, cranky previous folks refuse to grasp how various things are actually than they had been within the Eighties.)

Anyway, we’re not overlaying any of that immediately. That is as high-level a survey as you would ask for: How does every hitter fare in opposition to every class of pitch, and is the proportion of pitches he sees commensurate with these outcomes?

For every pitch group, I in contrast every hitter’s wOBA in opposition to that group, in addition to the proportion of whole pitches seen from that group, in opposition to league common. Hitters within the prime left quadrant hit fastballs very nicely however don’t see a whole lot of them; hitters within the backside proper see numerous fastballs however don’t hit them very nicely:

And whereas this chart seems to be pretty random — fastballs are a basic pitch; you’re by no means going to keep away from throwing them utterly — you possibly can see a transparent slope on the match line. I highlighted 5 outliers in several colours as an example a few of the outliers:

You’ll be able to see the entire gamut right here. Schuemann can’t hit the fastball, so he sees a ton of them, whereas Larnach kills fastballs and sees fewer of them than another hitter within the league. Then there are Trout, Soto, and Kwan, who stay at various stops on the “Jeez, I suppose we’ve obtained to throw them one thing” railway.

And there are totally different approaches to totally different hitters. Soto has one of the best fastball wOBA within the league, so pitchers will strive their luck with anything. Within the decade-long seek for holes in his swing — a search as arduous and dear as an expedition to search out the Northwest Passage — elevated fastballs had been the closest anybody ever obtained to a constant weak spot. So Trout, regardless of being an above-average hitter in opposition to fastballs, and faring higher in opposition to them than he has in opposition to off-speed stuff this 12 months, remains to be seeing one of many highest fastball charges within the league.

Which brings up one other enjoyable artifact of this search: The blokes who simply hit all the things. Out of 281 hitters within the pattern, solely six have a top-50 wOBA in opposition to all three pitch teams:

That’s 4 of the consensus greatest hitters in baseball, plus two of the most important first-half surprises this 12 months. Good for Fry and Profar.

Let’s see how our fastball outliers obtained pitched by way of off-speed stuff:

For those who’re having a tough time seeing Trout and Kwan’s dots on this graph, I don’t blame you. Each hitters drifted again towards common right here, and are seeing an applicable share of off-speed pitches:

However now it ought to be even clearer why Schuemann sees so many fastballs and Larnach sees so few. Larnach is among the 25 greatest fastball hitters within the league and one of many 15 worst off-speed hitters, so he sees actually the bottom share of fastballs and actually the very best share of off-speed stuff. Schuemann is the reverse.

Of the highest 10 hitters in off-speed OPS, six — Rob Refsnyder, Travis d’Arnaud, Rafael Devers, Brenton Doyle, Ezequiel Tovar, and Willy Adames — are two hundredth or decrease in off-speed pitch share. As soon as pitchers work out the place you’re sturdy, they’ll attempt to take that power away. What about breaking balls?

Lastly, a pitch group the place Soto is merely above-average:

And at last, our reply to the query of why Kwan and Trout maintain seeing so many fastballs: As a result of they’re simply pretty much as good in opposition to breaking pitches as they’re in opposition to warmth.

Schuemann and Larnach are two of 12 hitters within the league who’ve wOBAs within the prime 75 in two pitch teams however are backside 75 within the third. Of these 12 hitters, solely Pete Alonso (who has a wOBA of .214 on breaking balls, 241st out of the 281 hitters within the pattern) is seeing a below-average serving of his weakest pitch.

So are pitchers typically attacking hitters the place they’re weakest? Probably not:

The highest right-hand nook of this graph is fairly closely populated as a result of a whole lot of hitters stink at hitting two totally different teams of pitches. Javier Báez, as an illustration, is 276th in wOBA on fastballs, 233rd on off-speed pitches, and 273rd on breaking pitches. So whereas he’s technically backside 10 within the league in seeing his weakest pitch group (comparatively to the league), pitchers can mainly throw him something they need. He’s like the other of Decide.

Let’s flip that desk on its head, although. What number of hitters are getting an abnormally small serving to of their strongest pitch group?

The highest-left nook of this graph (excessive wOBA, low Pitch%) is far more closely populated, even with the caveat that there are some guys, like Decide, whose strengths are so huge they’re not possible to pitch round. This season, 24 totally different hitters are within the prime 10 in wOBA for no less than one pitch group; 16 of these hitters are two hundredth or decrease in Pitch% for that group. One other six are a centesimal or decrease.

The one two exceptions are Brent Rooker (seventh in wOBA, twenty eighth in Pitch% on breaking balls) and Kyle Tucker (tenth in wOBA on fastballs, sixtieth in Pitch%). And Tucker isn’t any decrease than forty first in wOBA on any of the three pitch sorts — he’s virtually within the Decide Zone. Rooker, no less than, is 202nd within the league in wOBA on off-speed pitches.

Throw Brent Rooker extra change-ups and splitters, I suppose, is the ethical of this story.