Does one's "specialty" pitch type correlate to future role in the majors?
by Grudyfan on Oct 20, 2010 6:24 PM EDT
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PrintOne common angle I've read about pitchers developing in the minors is that if one has a certain repertoire that he could follow a safe contingency path if things don't follow the ideal path for said pitcher. Most commonly, if a pitcher is said to have a wipe-out slider, he could be a future bullpen ace; if he has an excellent changeup, he should be a solid back-end starter or swingman.
What I wanted to see (given the information I had at hand) was if there was any truth to these preconceptions, though it wouldn't be through a perfect methodology. Using my old volumes of Baseball America's Prospect Handbook, I created a spreadsheet of the pitchers with each organization's best fastball, curveball, slider, changeup, and control. This provides this 'study' with two vulernabilities: 1) the subjective nature and the quality of Baseball America's scouts and 2) just because a pitcher in one organization might have their best fastball, there might be another organization with four pitchers that each have fastballs better than the aforementioned 'best' hurler.
After listing the 30 pitchers for each category, I tabulated his career games played, games started, innings pitched and WAR at the major league level. I then created a 'failure rate' that shows how many pitchers from a respective collection failed to appear in the major leagues, a percentage of games started from total games pitched and IP/WAR, which I devised to show which groups were the most efficient at tabulating wins, so a lower number in this category would imply a better performance.
The analysis after the jump...
For this 'study' I used the 2003 edition of Baseball America's Prospect Handbook, as 7 years of professional ball playing does a good job of weeding out fizzled prospects from players who are entrenched as valuable veterans at the major league level. As such, I know the caveat of small sample size also applies to this. Some players also appear on multiple lists (for example, Scott Kazmir was decided to have the best fastball and curveball in his organization).
Fastball
Though the group of the best fastballs has the highest accumulation of total WAR (and nearly the highest total innings pitched, coming in a close second), players with the best fastballs came in second-to-last in both failure rate (36.67%) and percentage of games started (33.97%). Fastball pitchers did finish second in IP/WAR at 76.04.
Top 5 WAR: Aaron Cook, Jose Contreras, Scott Kazmir, Rich Harden, Bobby Jenks
Curveball
In terms of counting stats, curveball pitchers did not do well, finishing fourth in G, GS, IP, and WAR. However, the ratios paint a different picture: Uncle Charliemeisters were second in failure rate (26.67%) and percentage of games started (37.68%) while finishing first in IP/WAR at 74.73
Top 5 WAR: Erik Bedard, Ubaldo Jimenez, Scott Kazmir, Francisco Rodriguez, John Patterson
Slider
Slideballers finished middle-of-the-pack in all of the counting stats, save for one: total games played, in which they finished comfortably in first place. Slider specialists had the lowest failure rate of any pitch by a rate half that of second place (13.33%). However, they also started the lowest percentage of games played at 27.69%, and rounding out a respectable third in IP/WAR at 77.25
Top 5 WAR: Cliff Lee, Jose Contreras, Jeremy Bonderman, Ervin Santana, Brad Lidge
Changeup
This is the group that surprised me the most, because my hypothesis was that pitchers with good changeups were the most 'advanced', since the failure to develop a good changeup is the demise of many young pitchers. In terms of counting stats, changeup specialists were last in every category by a considerable margin, and the ratios didn't show much improvement - this group had the highest failure rate at 43.33% and the worst IP/WAR at 88.95. They were ranked third in percentage of games started at 36.45.
Top 5 WAR: Rich Harden, Francisco Liriano, Joe Saunders, Jeremy Guthrie, Ryan Madson
Control
The control group (a double entendre. Get it?) fashioned leads in total IP and GS, was second in total WAR and third in total games played. Failure rate was third at 30%, IP/WAR was fourth at 78.58, but this group led all groups in percentage of games started at 42.71%
Top 5 WAR: Dan Haren, Zack Greinke, Jose Contreras, Dontelle Willis, Aaron Heilman
Quick synopsis based on one year's worth of data: having good control in the minors is a recipe for staying as a starting pitcher in the majors leagues. Having a good breaking ball will get you to the majors, though you may be relegated to the bullpen. Having a changeup as your best pitch would do you well to keep you in the rotation, if you can work up the ladder to the majors. Guys specializing in dealing heat can do well in the majors, if they don't flame out due to injury or ineffectiveness. Note that I did not try to correlate instances of injury to any particular group, and some evidence might exist suggesting that certain groups might be more prone to injury, but I think that's a caveat that generally applies to all pitchers.
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Impressive
Interesting read, and I think you should get some credit based on I’m sure this took some time to put together.
Any concerns I would have you pointed out (the sample size of one year, the subjectivity of the book, and the difference between ‘highest rated tool’ per system)
Hopefully you keep extrapolating this out through the years. I’d be interested in seeing how it trends.
Nice work
Obviously the information doesn’t exist publicly, but I’d be interested in seeing some kind of a double regression analysis based on pitch grades as prospects. That could provide some pretty interesting info on who does and doesn’t have a greater tendency to pan out, simply because most of the guys listed on the “best” lists are going to have more than one good pitch anyway, plus it completely eliminates anyone who didn’t have an ‘out’ pitch in the minors.
Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."
This is the best post I've seen on here in a long time though.
Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."
Good point.
It would be nice if there was an accessible way to compile this data because from there it would be pretty simple and might be really illustrative.
The research has been done
Google “victor wang prospects” and read Victor Wangs work. Good stuff there.
- .-. ..- … – / – …. . / .—. .-. - .. . … …
by Jeff Zimmerman on Oct 22, 2010 8:40 AM EDT up reply actions
+50
I know they’re not perfect or anything, but I love what Wang did with prospects and draft picks.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 22, 2010 5:20 PM EDT up reply actions
In the Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers there is an essay titled Pitcher Codes
In which they code pitchers based on their attributes (handedness, arm angle, velocity) and respective repertoires. While it was a rather simple exercise, Neyer thought it would make for an interesting study to determine which codes portend success. This is a pretty neat step in that direction. Great post.
Ya, good work
though I chuckled when I saw Dontrelle Willis in the control group haha.
I was just super depressed by it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU_9zTD9B98&feature=related
Apparently there's an epilepsy warning on this video. But it's so incredibly cool.
by Dan Strittmatter on Oct 21, 2010 4:54 PM EDT up reply actions
More can be done with this
This is a really really interesting read, albeit with the drawbacks that you (and others) posted, but we can take some next steps. I think with a few of the bright minds on here we can refine the process and come up with a truly interesting study with a large enough sample size to be meaningful. A few ideas:
-A pitcher is more than just his best pitch. Changeups are great, but their effectiveness is more about how it’s used alongside with the fastball: separation, control, similar delivery, etc. What if, instead of looking at just a single pitch, we looked at the best 2 or 3 pitches for each pitcher?
-Using a similar methodology, we could see which pitching “style” or “profile” translates best to the majors. Who is a a minors mirage and who will do better than we’d expect based on their minor league performance (i.e. is the fastball / changeup guy a better minor league pitcher than he is a major league pitcher?)
-Frankly, I suspect if we did something like this we wouldn’t find any correlation that we’d feel comfortable with. So much of a pitcher’s success depends on his mindset, coaching, luck with injuries, ability to adjust, and a slew of minor things. I think it would still be interesting and we could extract some value, but I’m guessing we’d find an incredible layer of variability
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Greinke as a control guy?
I didn’t realize control guys had 92-96 MPH fastballs and multiple plus offspeed pitches.
I have a hard time believing that people considered Greinke a “control guy” when he was hitting 96.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
Best in organization
Greinke would have been graded by BA as having the best control in the organization. Someone like Colt Griffin probably got best fastball in organization.
Greinke got the “next Maddux” tag slapped on him; he’s always been considered a control guy, albeit one with plus stuff.
I just don't think you can really be a control guy with multiple plus pitches
That’s just a really well-rounded, high-quality pitcher.
To me, a control guy is a guy that depends on his control for success- i.e. he might not be a MLB player without the control. Greinke always had the stuff to pitch in the majors even without plus control.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 21, 2010 10:51 AM EDT up reply actions
I wasn't clear, i guess
In the BA Prospect handbook, for every team they list the best tools in the organization—best power, best speed, etc. for hitters, and best pitches and control for pitchers. Just because they listed Greinke as having the best control didn’t mean they thought of him strictly as a “control” guy, it just meant he had the best control in the system.
Too have the pitches he had/has, and the best control in the organization was what made him such an excellent prospect, turned him into an excellent MLB pitcher.
Exactly. But the point is that in this post he's labeled as a "control guy"
I’m definitely not saying that he doesn’t have plus control, he absolutely does. The point is that he wasn’t a guy who retained most of his prospect status from having such good control and command. He retained it by having plus raw stuff AND good command, which pushed him to elite status. Control guys don’t have great stuff, they’re only prospects because their control and command are so good. Greinke would’ve been a prospect even without the command, so it’s hard to see how he falls into the control guy category.
The truly elite pitchers don’t have plus command or plus raw stuff, they have both.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 21, 2010 3:39 PM EDT up reply actions
he falls into the best control category because he had the best control in the royals organization.
that doesn’t really seem hard to see.
Just because you have the best control on your team doesn't make you a control guy
A control guy succeeds essentially because of his control and in spite of his raw stuff.. You simply can’t say that about Greinke.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 21, 2010 4:58 PM EDT up reply actions
This is a list of specialty groups, and he's in the control group
And I think that calling Greinke’s specialty control is dumb, because his control is obviously going to look even better with a 94 MPH fastball and two plus offspeed pitches.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 21, 2010 6:32 PM EDT up reply actions
your attempt to obfuscate the meaning of something as unambiguous as "pitching prospect with the best control in the kansas city organization" is amazing.
there is no hidden meaning to this.
That's not the damn point
The point is that the writer of this post was claiming that control is Greinke’s specialty, not that he previously had the best control among Royals prospects.
I think that claiming that control is the primary reason for Greinke’s success isn’t particularly fair, because he’s got some really great raw stuff.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 22, 2010 5:22 PM EDT up reply actions
Hey, I was at my internship
I needed to do something to waste some time. You’re clearly a far busier man than me, apparently.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 24, 2010 2:49 AM EDT up reply actions
Last try
He broke them down the way BA had awarded each teams “best” in any given category: “Using my old volumes of Baseball America’s Prospect Handbook, I created a spreadsheet of the pitchers with each organization’s best fastball, curveball, slider, changeup, and control.”
Greinke had been rated by BA as having the KC organization’s best control. That is why he is in the “control” group.
I don’t have that handbook handy, but my guess is someone like Colt Griffin had best Fastball, Chris George best changeup, maybe Affeldt best curveball and who knows best slider. So Griffin goes on the spreadsheet under fastball, and Greinke under control.
No one is saying Greinke didn’t have other things going for him.
Fair enough.
I think the way in which he put together each group is flawed. That’s all.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 21, 2010 6:32 PM EDT up reply actions
I don't think it's always so cut and dry. The best pitchers would fall into multiple categories. There's no great way to say "he's a control guy"
Okay, Greg Maddux is a control/command guy but what made him a Hall of Famer was much more than that.
by Kenneth Arthur on Oct 21, 2010 7:32 PM EDT up reply actions
EXACTLY!!
You can’t take brilliant all-around pitchers and try to slap the “control pitcher” label on them.
Control pitchers are guys that primarily succeed because of their control, and in spite of raw stuff that wouldn’t play at the MLB level without said control. Greinke doesn’t fit into that category, at all.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 22, 2010 5:23 PM EDT up reply actions
It is flawed...
But he flat out admitted that it wasn’t going to be perfect. Sometimes when doing an analysis if the right data or information is available then you can still make a good decision using the relevant data that is available.
"God, I'm from Cleveland. When is it going to be our time?"
And I'm seriously questioning the decision to put Greinke into the control group
Because calling control the specialty of someone with a 92-96 fastball and two plus offspeed pitches doesn’t seem particularly reasonable to me.
The whole point is that you can’t say that Greinke’s specialty is his control because he once had the best control in the KC organization, and making similar assumptions with other pitchers doesn’t really make sense either. It’s just not a reasonable leap to see that Greinke’s control was regarded as the best in the farm system and immediately assume that it was the primary characteristic behind his success.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 22, 2010 5:26 PM EDT up reply actions
The poster did not
BA put Greinke in the best control in his organization group, so he got evaluated as a member of that group.
Here’s an example in a similar line of thinking. You compare the #1 starters for every team in the postseason, ranking them on categories like BA’s (best fastball, best curveball, best slider, best changeup, best control). No doubt the best control award would go to Cliff Lee. Wait, Lee’s struck out double digits all postseason long…how is he a control guy? He’s not lobbing up 62mph slow changes and living on his location. However, he’s also walking the least of any other ace and controlling the zone better than any other ace. That makes him the leader in the control category.
You’re assuming that the poster assigned the role of “best control” to Greinke when, in fact, the tag was applied by BA. He’s simply evaluated who was given that tag and how they produced. Greinke out produced others who were given the same tag, so he ended up listed as one of the top guys in that category. No one is saying he’s a soft tosser or anything or the sort.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
by biggentleben on Oct 24, 2010 1:24 AM EDT up reply actions
He was a control guy
His fastball was around 90 to 92, his slider wasn’t as devastating, he didn’t have a change, and the slow curve isn’t really a feature pitch. It wasn’t until his bullpen stint that he could throw 95 and still maintain velocity and location that he became the pitcher he is.
I don't recall this
I DO recall he used to not just bring his fastball all the time, and he would hit anywhere from 88-96 with it. I remember a game against Detroit in (I think) his rookie year when he hit every mph between something like 66 and 96, except one.
But it is after he went to the pen that he started to dial it up all the time.
we're talking about an 18 year old greinke here. people seem to be thinking of him in terms of what he is now or when you first saw him in the majors..
he sat at 91-93 then. he didn’t have four plus pitches.
And an 18-year-old that throws 91-93 has a big arm
That’s legitimately impressive velocity from a HS draft pick.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 22, 2010 5:27 PM EDT up reply actions
Even in the majors he was mostly around 90 Satch
And his slider was good but not great. His change didn’t exist. HeWAS a control pitcher. No surprise heave up a ton of taters, when he missed his spot he got hit hard.
yes
I don’t really know why this is hard to understand . . .Greinke wasn’t a soft-tosser, but all throughout his time as a prospect, he was clearly lumped in more with the finesse guys than the power arms. A good example of a recent prospect who fit a similar profile is Brian Matusz, who had multiple good pitches, a fastball that sat in the low 90s from the left side, and yet he got described as a “control pitcher”.
Probably because I was like 11 or 12 when Greinke was a prospect.
Maybe I was mistaken in terms of the type of prospect that Greinke was, and apparently I need to read up more on old scouting reports.
I don’t know, I just thought this study wasn’t nearly extensive enough to be conclusive in terms of anything. Picking out the Greinke thing just seemed like one flaw, but obviously I didn’t expect to end up placing so much focus on it like this.
I suppose I just view “control guys” different from other people, but generally speaking I think our disagreements here are related more to a misunderstandings than anything.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 24, 2010 9:47 PM EDT up reply actions
if you want a beef with the topic then ...
Curveball – Francisco Rodriguez was known as a slider pitcher and not for his curve. Bedard was more of a fastball change pitcher.
Slider – C.Lee wasn’t really known for the slider, more the fastball and slow curve. Contreras was the fastball and split.
Change – Harden was more of a split, Liriano didn’t really feature much of a change until after TJ when it became his primary weapon. Guthrie didn’t have much of a change.
Control – Contreras had terrible control and so did Willis.
Case #something
of why you should always break a starter in from the bullpen. It teaches them to use the fastball and stop bullshitting.
Exactly
Somy think it stunts the development. I think it’s awesome for fastball command, working both sides of the plate and up and down with the fastball.
you can be known for your command/control and have plus stuff
it is what makes many number 1 starters, “control” pitchers normally get that label because that is what is neccesary for them to be an mlb pitcher. However, take away Greinke’s command/control and he would still be an MLB pitcher with his plus plus stuff, but the command/control is what makes him special. Just like Cliff Lee.
Isn't that pretty much what I said above?
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 21, 2010 1:53 PM EDT up reply actions
not really
you said you can’t be known as a control pitcher if you have good stuff, I am saying they are seperate, just becuase you have good stuff doesn’t mean you can’t be known for having great control and command.
That's absolutely what I said
I just meant that you can’t have the label of a “control guy” when you have plus stuff, because if you have plus stuff and plus control, you’re just a really damn good pitcher.
Obviously guys like Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay have incredible command to go with plus stuff, and that’s why they’re the best of the best.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 21, 2010 3:43 PM EDT up reply actions
got ya
but if you look at the guys in the control group above, it is clear that the pitchers mentioned are not “control” prospects in the fact that there control/command is not there only ticket to the majors, with most of them having good stuff as well.
And I think that those guys are misclassified
Because anyone who has a couple plus pitches simply isn’t a control guy.
Baseball is my preferred sport. It should be yours, too.
I'm an editor for Beyond the Box Score, an SB Nation blog.
by Satchel Price on Oct 21, 2010 4:59 PM EDT up reply actions
think of control and command as tools
not so much the style of pitcher.
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