Perfect Cain!!!

Disagree. I think hitter approach is, by far, the biggest factor. Including, yes, hitter approach against flame-throwing bullpen specialists that every team now employs.

I will certainly agree that sabermetric data has shown strikeouts not to be any more damaging than any other type of out. Not making the out is much more important than how you make it. But that still goes back to hitter approach: strikeouts don't have a stigma anymore, like they did in the (not-long-ago) days when Rob Deer and Jose Hernandez were benched so they wouldn't break Bobby Bonds' all-time record. So hitters today don't feel obligated to choke up with two strikes, or try to just "make contact" like many of us were taught to do as kids. And, partly, it's a psychological thing: there are a LOT of major league hitters who think changing their approach depending on the situation will completely disrupt their game, that they got to the majors hitting this way and if they change anything at all, they won't be able to hit anymore. You'd be shocked how many hitters truly believe that.

Jayson Stark touched on this earlier today: http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/8048897/the-age-pitcher-how-got-here-mlb

 

There also is almost no turf left for those shortened swing grounders to skip on anymore, so why not swing away? That is what hitters might be thinking as well.

 

Until someone notable placehits and bunts for hits enough to get a team to stop shifting against him.

Then I fully expect more hitters to start doing it, especially against the big shifts a lot of guys are facing.

 

And even then ...

Read Joe Maddon's quote from earlier in that Stark article. To paraphrase:

"Sometimes we shift on a hitter because it's part of our defensive and pitching strategy. Sometimes we shift ... just to fuck with him."

You nailed him, Coach, in his fucking head. Right in his mind!

So yeah, batters are going to have to do a lot more than place-hit to overcome what pitchers and managers are doing right now.

 

Oh, I agree.

And I fuck with them right back, by laying one down the third base line and taking my free hit.

Put the onus right back on the defensive team. Because changing that stuff in the middle of an inning, middle of a game is where you're going to catch them.

 

With the new hotness being batters trying to work pitchers for longer counts every at-bat (e.g., the Mets), I'd be interested in knowing to whom and by how much the statistical edge goes the longer each at-bat lasts.

 

League splits, baby.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/split.cgi?t=b&lg=MLB&year=2012#count

Code:

                                    
Split              AB   BA  OBP  SLG
First Pitch      7305 .328 .334 .530
1-0 Count        4753 .337 .337 .559
2-0 Count        1730 .355 .355 .626
3-0 Count         104 .337 .953 .712
0-1 Count        6297 .317 .325 .475
1-1 Count        6057 .332 .334 .524
2-1 Count        3712 .334 .335 .555
3-1 Count        1552 .343 .688 .631
0-2 Count        5978 .143 .149 .215
1-2 Count       10154 .163 .170 .237
2-2 Count        9602 .181 .186 .280
Full Count       6307 .222 .453 .374
After 1-0       23925 .269 .380 .443
After 2-0        6937 .277 .498 .479
After 3-0        1258 .279 .738 .490
After 0-1       32321 .224 .265 .345
After 1-1       25183 .238 .307 .379
After 2-1       11851 .250 .385 .418
After 3-1        3553 .272 .576 .463
After 0-2       13076 .165 .194 .249
After 1-2       18322 .179 .228 .273
After 2-2       13908 .194 .291 .315
Three Balls      7963 .247 .564 .428
Two Strikes     32041 .176 .244 .273
Batter Ahead    18158 .298 .468 .507
Even Count      22964 .268 .272 .424
Pitcher Ahead   22429 .201 .208 .298

Now, I'll reorder this by length of at-bat:

Code:

                                    
Split              AB   BA  OBP  SLG
First Pitch      7305 .328 .334 .530
0-1 Count        6297 .317 .325 .475
1-0 Count        4753 .337 .337 .559

0-2 Count        5978 .143 .149 .215
1-1 Count        6057 .332 .334 .524
2-0 Count        1730 .355 .355 .626

1-2 Count       10154 .163 .170 .237
2-1 Count        3712 .334 .335 .555
3-0 Count         104 .337 .953 .712

2-2 Count        9602 .181 .186 .280
3-1 Count        1552 .343 .688 .631

Full Count       6307 .222 .453 .374

Seems a hitter has the edge the longer the at-bat goes. But really, the main difference is whether there's two strikes or not.

 

I knew hitting with two strikes gave the pitcher an advantage, but that's pretty telling.

 

Yeah, you would think that with the hole a guy falls into whenever there's a two-strike count, hacking away wouldn't be so ridiculed as a strategy. I've always thought the spate of no-hitters/perfect games of late has something to do with the hitter's willingness to let strike one go right past him. I recall Halladay's no-nos in particular, there were just a ton of first-pitch called strikes.

 

That's terrific.

I was thinking more about where the hitter's numbers go as the pitch count rises in any particular at-bat. If you're fouling off a lot of baseballs, are you gaining an advantage within that at-bat? Or losing it?

Let's say it takes five pitches to get to 3 -2. That's pretty easy to parse statistically, as the table above shows.

But what if it takes 11 pitches to get there? Or 8? Or 14?

I'm sort of curious about the short-term effect of pitch count on at-bats. Especially as it may or may not relate to what may or may not be a new Pitchers' Age.

(I see your addition above, and wonder if there's a moment in a long at-bat when the advantage returns to the pitcher. Or if the batter has the edge after the count goes full and keeps it.)

 

I'd guess the more pitches a pitcher throws, the better chance the hitter has of getting a hit or drawing a walk.

 

Anecdotally, I think that hitters would gain an advantage by fouling off more pitches. But I can't find the PBP data to support that. It's out there, just not sure where to look at the moment.