(Photo Credit: USA Today)
In an earlier post, I examined the performance of major league pitchers on ground balls in 2013 and learned that the Tigers staff had the highest Batting Average Against (BAA) on grounders. The theory was that their generally immobile infield defense was giving up a lot of hits, but it did not seem to have affected all pitchers the same way. While the staff had a .278 average on ground balls (versus an MLB average of .241), Anibal Sanchez was apparently unaffected posting a .243 average. So, I was curious to see what other pitchers in the majors had better than expected results on ground balls.
One year of data doesn't give us a good sample of ground balls to work with for individual pitchers, so I expanded to three years (2011-2013). Table 1 below shows the top ground ball BAAs for pitchers allowing at least 400 ground balls from 2011-2013. The leader was Rockies right hander Jhoulys Chacin at .176 (He was also the leader when I did this previously for 2010-2012). Chacin was a moderate ground ball pitcher during the period with a 49% ground ball rate on batted balls. Given that Chacin played half his games in Coors Field, a power hitter's paradise, his ability to gets outs on ground balls was certainly advantageous.
Table 1: Batting Average Against on Ground Balls, 2011-2013
Pitcher | GB | H | BAA |
Jhoulys Chacin | 709 | 125 | .176 |
Scott Feldman | 516 | 99 | .192 |
Johnny Cueto | 651 | 130 | .200 |
Henderson Alvarez | 677 | 136 | .201 |
Mike Leake | 846 | 170 | .201 |
Jeanmar Gomez | 402 | 81 | .201 |
Jered Weaver | 570 | 116 | .204 |
Ricky Romero | 681 | 139 | .204 |
Jordan Zimmermann | 767 | 157 | .205 |
Brad Ziegler | 432 | 89 | .206 |
Hisashi Iwakuma | 490 | 102 | .208 |
Tim Lincecum | 772 | 161 | .209 |
Jarrod Parker | 493 | 104 | .211 |
Shaun Marcum | 454 | 96 | .211 |
Luke Hochevar | 632 | 134 | .212 |
The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet.
Some pitchers benefited from better infield defense than others with team ground ball BAAs ranging from .230 for the Reds to .266 for the Tigers. That is not necessarily all defense of course. It could have been that some staffs allowed harder hit ground balls than others. Over three years, however, I would guess that averages would even out enough to suggest something about team defense. I attempted to adjust for differences in infield defense by calculating the ground ball BAA of other pitchers on the same staff. For example, Chacin had a .144 BAA in 2011 compared to .251 for other Colorado pitchers. So, his BAA was 43% better than the average pitcher giving him a BAA+ of 143 that year.
Chacin's numbers in 2012 and 2013 were 121 and 114 respectively and the weighted average of all three years was 128. Thus, he was 28% better at avoiding hits on ground balls than the average pitcher. Table 2 below shows that this was also the top BAA+ on ground balls in the majors. The worst pitcher at preventing hits on ground balls was former Yankees' right hander Phil Hughes at 72 (28% worse than average).
Table 2: Adjusted Batting Average Against on Ground Balls, 2011-2013
Pitcher | GB | H | BAA | BAA+ |
Jhoulys Chacin | 709 | 125 | .176 | 128 |
Luke Hochevar | 632 | 134 | .212 | 120 |
Scott Feldman | 516 | 99 | .192 | 119 |
Lucas Harrell | 508 | 109 | .215 | 118 |
Chris Sale | 590 | 128 | .217 | 117 |
Jeanmar Gomez | 402 | 81 | .201 | 116 |
Hisashi Iwakuma | 490 | 102 | .208 | 116 |
Johnny Cueto | 651 | 130 | .200 | 116 |
Brad Ziegler | 432 | 89 | .206 | 115 |
Hiroki Kuroda | 924 | 205 | .222 | 115 |
Henderson Alvarez | 677 | 136 | .201 | 115 |
Mike Leake | 846 | 170 | .201 | 115 |
Jordan Zimmermann | 767 | 157 | .205 | 115 |
Scott Diamond | 613 | 137 | .223 | 114 |
Justin Verlander | 791 | 184 | .233 | 114 |
The information used here was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by Retrosheet.
Looking at Tigers pitchers, Verlander's 233 BAA did not make the top 50, but his 114 BAA+ was 15th in baseball as he was better at preventing hits on grounders than other Tigers pitchers. Conversely, Max Scherzer was one of the worst in the majors with an 85 BAA+. So, it's good that he is an extreme fly ball pitcher as well as a strikeout artist. Other current and former Tigers pitchers include Doug Fister (109), Anibal Sanchez (100) and Rick Porcello (98). Note that Sanchez's statistics also include time with the Marlins.
I put the numbers for all MLB pitchers in 2011-2013 into a Google spreadsheet.
No comments:
Post a Comment