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

One benefit of residing 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 effectively 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 absolutely have made Henry Chadwick soil his trousers.

Which most likely overstates the impression of those findings, similar to they’re. One among my main takeaways is that Aaron Choose 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 completely different batters had seen 500 or extra pitches this season. I separated these pitches into three completely different classes: fastballs, off-speed, and breaking balls, and took every hitter’s wOBA in opposition to every of these pitch varieties.

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 Second, cranky outdated individuals refuse to grasp how various things at the moment are than they have been within the Eighties.)

Anyway, we’re not masking any of that immediately. That is as high-level a survey as you may 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 complete pitches seen from that group, in opposition to league common. Hitters within the prime left quadrant hit fastballs very effectively however don’t see plenty of them; hitters within the backside proper see a lot of fastballs however don’t hit them very effectively:

And whereas this chart appears pretty random — fastballs are a basic pitch; you’re by no means going to keep away from throwing them utterly — you may see a transparent slope on the match line. I highlighted 5 outliers in numerous colours for example among the outliers:

You possibly can 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 some other hitter within the league. Then there are Trout, Soto, and Kwan, who stay at various stops on the “Jeez, I assume we’ve received to throw them one thing” railway.

And there are completely different approaches to completely different hitters. Soto has one of the best fastball wOBA within the league, so pitchers will attempt their luck with the rest. Within the decade-long seek for holes in his swing — a search as arduous and expensive as an expedition to seek out the Northwest Passage — elevated fastballs have been the closest anybody ever received to a constant weak point. 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 pieces. 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 finest 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 received 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 acceptable share of off-speed pitches:

However now it needs to be even clearer why Schuemann sees so many fastballs and Larnach sees so few. Larnach is among the 25 finest 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 determine 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 eventually, our reply to the query of why Kwan and Trout hold 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? Not likely:

The highest right-hand nook of this graph is fairly closely populated as a result of plenty of hitters stink at hitting two completely 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 alternative of Choose.

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 Choose, whose strengths are so huge they’re not possible to pitch round. This season, 24 completely different hitters are within the prime 10 in wOBA for a minimum of one pitch group; 16 of these hitters are two hundredth or decrease in Pitch% for that group. One other six are a hundredth 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 is not any decrease than forty first in wOBA on any of the three pitch varieties — he’s nearly within the Choose Zone. Rooker, a minimum of, is 202nd within the league in wOBA on off-speed pitches.

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