Felix Hernandez and Michael Pineda not only entertain Mariners fans, they also bring us peace of mind because their success can be easily understood. Despite Doug Fister’s and Jason Vargas’s demonstrated value over the last year and a half, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop since their success defies easy explanation.
I have nothing to say about Jason Vargas at present, though remembering how Jamie Moyer defied gravity for a decade does calm the nerves when thinking about Jason. Instead I think I have come across a Doug Fister statistical anomaly that I think explains why he succeeds and may help us understand how he succeeds.
Let me start by stating what everyone has already noted about what Doug Fister does. Doug Fister is imminently hittable. He throws pitches that are easy to hit by MLB standards. Of qualified starts, he has the 12th easiest pitches to make contact with, whether they are thrown in the strike-zone (batters make contact 92.3% of the time when the ball is thrown in the strike zone) or out-of-zone (batters make contact 78% of the time when they swing at pitches out of the strike zone). Note that these are significant improvements over last year when Fister had the easiest pitches to hit out of the zone and the 6th easiest pitches to hit in the zone.
What I noticed when looking at Doug’s contact rates that surprised me is that batters have very unusual swing rates against him. He has very low swing rates for strikes and very high swing rates for balls. This can be seen in the following two histograms of the number of pitchers with a particular ratio of out-of-zone to in-zone swing rates. Doug Fister is a total outlier this year as well as last.
Doug Fister has mastered the art of getting hitters to swing at bad pitches and watch good pitches. The question is how? I do not think it is a consequence of pitch movement. I suspect it is partially pitch location, his strikes and balls both being on the outer range of the strike zone. I also think it results from batter confusion, and I wonder to what extent it is a function of batter hubris. They come up looking for a centered fastball of hanging breaking ball until they get to two strikes, at which point they expand the zone. Fister does not throw centered pitches or hangers all that often, so they are behind in the count and swing at balls, leading to weak contact. Whatever the explanation, the conjecture this is central to Doug’s success and explaining the pattern could go a long way to explains Doug’s surprising level of success.
- Kelly Gaffney
The font size for the text of this (and only this) article is small enough to be unreadable without copying it to Word. Not sure what's going on, but the font size of the graph legend is normal/legible.
Just a head's up.
The new site layout is much nicer.
It could just be well located pitches.
For instance batter (A) comes to the plate. It is well known that batter (A) has a compact swing and likes to turn on an inside fastball. Fister with precise location gives the guy what he wants an inside pitch that is located outside the zone.
Batter (B) comes to the plate. Batter (B) likes to extend his arms on low and away pitches. Fister in turn offers low and away pitches however they are outside the zone and simply fouled off the end of the bat.
We've all agreed that his plus location pitches is what a lot of his success is based on. He rarely makes a mistake and misses as evidenced in his low HR Rates not to mention his GB/FB rates. I'm not ambitious enough to check game logs and compare location to hot zone, but it may be a place to start. Sounds logical anyhow.
It could just be well located pitches.
For instance batter (A) comes to the plate. It is well known that batter (A) has a compact swing and likes to turn on an inside fastball. Fister with precise location gives the guy what he wants an inside pitch that is located outside the zone.
Batter (B) comes to the plate. Batter (B) likes to extend his arms on low and away pitches. Fister in turn offers low and away pitches however they are outside the zone and simply fouled off the end of the bat.
We've all agreed that his plus location pitches is what a lot of his success is based on. He rarely makes a mistake and misses as evidenced in his low HR Rates not to mention his GB/FB rates. I'm not ambitious enough to check game logs and compare location to hot zone, but it may be a place to start. Sounds logical anyhow.
It could just be well located pitches.
For instance batter (A) comes to the plate. It is well known that batter (A) has a compact swing and likes to turn on an inside fastball. Fister with precise location gives the guy what he wants an inside pitch that is located outside the zone.
Batter (B) comes to the plate. Batter (B) likes to extend his arms on low and away pitches. Fister in turn offers low and away pitches however they are outside the zone and simply fouled off the end of the bat.
We've all agreed that his plus location pitches is what alot of his success is based on. He rarely makes a mistake and misses as evidenced in his low HR Rates not to mention his GB/FB rates. I'm not ambitious enough to check game logs and compare location to hot zone, but it may be a place to start. Nibbling the hot zones (which is like playing with fire for some pitchers) and pitching to the cold zones.
It's funny: for several years, sabermetricians were quite hostile to the idea that a pitcher could sustain a low BABIP rate -- despite examples like Moyer, Zito, and Pedro who did sustain them.These days, saberamigos do seem to have discovered the idea that if a pitcher gets a disproportionate number of BIPs off those balls-out-of-zone, why mercy sakes alive, we guess that WOULD lead to a lower BABIP...So if a pitcher can get a lower BABIP that way ... isn't it just cutting the data one level finer, to say "balls in zone" or "balls centered in zone" vs. "balls on the black in the zone"?With Fister, we've been watching hitters swing at pitcher's pitches for quite a while. The Catfish Hunter game requires hair-fine mistake avoidance, but there are a few pitchers who can go a whole game with very few centered FB's.
... or that it was quite so unusual for a pitcher to excel at swing rates inside, and swings outside, the zone.As of June 2, Fister is still at it:29% - MLB average, swings out of zone35% - Fister's rate65% - MLB average, swing rate assuming pitch is a strike56% - Fister's rateML pitchers -- as a group -- already have mind-boggling command of their locations. That Fister should throw so MANY MORE unappetizing strikes, so consistently, than his peers, speaks to his truly superior command.(Fister is capable of throwing a yakker that freezes a batter, but there are quite a few pitchers who can do this.)Believe that the explanation here is pretty straightforward: Fister can paint strike one with much more consistency even than other command artists...........What is a bit more mysterious to me, is how Fister gets so many batters fishing. No doubt, Dr. K's idea of "expanding the strike zone" after (say) a 1-2 count plays a role. But lots of pitchers (maybe all* ML pitchers) do that effectively.In the mind's eye, I don't really remember seeing a lot of swings on Fister's tease pitches. Looking forward to investigating this one.
It seems to me that this is what you'd expect of a great control pitcher. Unless they are Vlad Guerrero, Alfonso Sorriano, or Adrian Beltre on a low and away slider, MLB hitters don't tend to swing on balls significantly outside of the strike zone.
Fister's control and tendency to work off of strike one and pitchers counts allows him to throw the ball in that 'too close to take' zone. A baseball's width off the black. So his 'out of zone' being so much closer to 'in the zone' should equal more defensive swings and misses.
Bet you Dave Allen could measure that. (I wonder where he gets his database.)
It seemed to me that he has to be crossing up the hitters, but you provide a compelling explanation for how. If he pitches to hitters cold zones early in the count, they would be likely to watch a bunch of strikes. It would be fun to watch Fister pitch after getting the scouting report to test this hypothesis.
Olivo replaces Johnson/Moore and the M's have the top rotation in tghe AL.
The M's, to continue their torrid W streak, need to compensate for the Dan Wilson TM catcher 80-game offensive wall; word is they lose their legs.
Work to be able to bat Olivo #7 or 8 in the lineup and we have something.
Ackely and a real LF/DH and the M's can then keep their ERA general on the battlefield.
The M's are playing with confidence and serious MOJO. Olivo carries this and needs to be behind the plate.
The M's need to be prepared for a designated catcher, the way they are working Olivo.