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For the first time since 1926, the most powerful offenses in each league will be facing off in this year’s Fall Classic, and fans and media have been busy pondering the ability of either pitching staff to hold up. Both the Yankees and Phillies boast deep and powerful lineups that can easily convert a few mistakes into crooked numbers on the scoreboard, and Joe Girardi and Charlie Manuel have surely spent anxious hours trying to determine the optimal way to ensure their best available arms pitch the most and, most important, innings. The countdown to Game One has included speculation on whether the Yankees will stick with a three-man rotation, how much gas Pedro Martinez has in his tank, whether CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee can be effective through three starts in a seven-game series, and whether Manual will continue his careful use of volatile “closer” Brad Lidge.

But according to Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci, one veteran player believes a radically different approach could be used to combat such deep and powerful lineups. John Smoltz, proud owner of a 15-4 postseason record, surprised Verducci with this description of how a team could best face the Yankees. “I would treat it like a spring training game with my pitchers,” Smoltz said. “I would keep bringing in a fresh arm to pitch to them, rather than asking my starting pitcher to go deep into the game trying to get them out two, three, four times. They just wear out a pitcher. I know nobody would ever do it, because what message would people think you were giving your starting pitcher? But their lineup is so deep I would change pitchers every two or three innings, just like you do in spring training.”

Verducci’s fans at SI may be tempted to call this idea the Smoltz ‘One Matchup’ Axiom, or SOMA for short. But frequent readers of BP might recognize this as being very much like another SOMA: the “Shorter Outings, More Appearances” usage pattern I wrote about this summer. The idea behind SOMA is to have starting pitchers work in tandem, each pitching three or four innings in a given game every third day-resulting in a similar innings workload for the season, but spread over a greater number of games. The main benefit of SOMA, granting the large assumption that such a usage pattern wouldn’t increase arm fatigue and cause injuries or loss of effectiveness, is that it allows pitchers to avoid facing the same batter more than once or at most twice. Most pitchers show a significant drop in effectiveness with each spin through the batting order, so applying SOMA might allow pitchers currently used as starters to continue to work 200-plus innings, with every one of those innings, unlike now, featuring the pitcher at his most effective.

Verducci himself noticed the increased production of Yankees hitters with each successive turn they took against Angels starters in this year’s ALCS-for example, their aggregate OBP jumped from .333 to .396 to .421 the third time through. But Verducci describes this as a feature of the Yankees lineup itself and its propensity to wear down pitchers by driving up pitch counts, and mentions that the Phillies have a similar approach. When I wrote about SOMA last July, I looked at pitchers individually and in aggregate and saw similar (but less pronounced) results, but I didn’t look at specific hitters or lineups.

So, is Verducci onto something here? Do the Yankees and Phillies produce a more rapid and pronounced erosion of starter effectiveness than other teams, and if so, is this due to their approach? To test this idea, let’s take a look at the 2009 numbers for our World Series protagonists in relation to their respective league averages:


     2009 Batting Totals By Times Facing Starting Pitcher
               AL Totals              |  Yankees Totals
                             Changes  |                  Changes
Times Faced   AVG/ OBP/ SLG  OBP SLG  |   AVG/ OBP/ SLG  OBP SLG
Starter 1st  .263/.329/.420           |  .274/.342/.444
Starter 2nd  .274/.336/.444   +7 +24  |  .280/.350/.464   +8 +20
Starter 3rd  .281/.345/.462  +16 +42  |  .283/.362/.497  +20 +53
Reliever     .255/.335/.404           |  .286/.377/.487

               NL Totals              |  Phillies Totals                              
                             CHG CHG  |                  Changes
Times Faced   AVG/ OBP/ SLG  OBP SLG  |   AVG/ OBP/ SLG  OBP SLG 
Starter 1st  .250/.315/.392           |  .246/.319/.431
Starter 2nd  .265/.331/.422  +16 +30  |  .265/.326/.456   +7 +25
Starter 3rd  .283/.348/.458  +33 +66  |  .286/.353/.506  +34 +75
Reliever     .249/.333/.387           |  .246/.339/.418

Here we see aggregate totals for the first, second, and third times batters face a starting pitcher, as well as when they face relievers. The “Changes” columns show the amount that OBP and SLG rates have increased from the first time through the order. As expected, in both the AL and NL totals, there is a clear decrease in starter effectiveness with each pass through the lineup. The same is true for the Yankees’ and Phillies’ totals-but the change for those teams aren’t much different than their respective league totals. Both teams really lay the wood to an opposing starter when they get a third crack at him, but the second time through, the Bronx Bombers are virtually average, while the Phightin’ Phils actually get less of a boost than the average NL squad.

This seems to show that there isn’t anything extraordinary about our two protagonists’ abilities to erode starter effectiveness-in fact, both teams are about in the middle of the pack. Here’s how the Yankees stack up in the AL:


2009 AL Increased Hitter Productivity Per Time Facing Starter
                           3rd Time
              1st Time     OBP   SLG
Team          OBP   SLG    CHG   CHG   P/PA     P/IP
Angels       .316  .391    +58  +130   3.88    17.12
Indians      .297  .367    +58   +95   3.93    17.13
Rays         .334  .414    +28   +95   3.96    17.30
Royals       .309  .378    +24   +71   3.79    16.04
Twins        .347  .426    +20   +65   3.86    16.94
Rangers      .318  .436    +28   +56   3.82    16.41
Yankees      .342  .444    +20   +53   3.88    17.49
White Sox    .327  .405    +14   +26   3.79    16.15
Blue Jays    .334  .446     -7   +30   3.75    16.40
Tigers       .335  .424     -4   +12   3.76    16.22
Orioles      .341  .428     -2    +9   3.80    16.41
Athletics    .339  .407     -9    +1   3.82    16.43
Mariners     .312  .420     +4   -16   3.78    15.94
Red Sox      .359  .498    -13   -38   3.94    17.59

As you can see, the Yankees are seventh in a 14-team league in their ability to increase both OBP and SLG between the first and third time they see an opposing starter. The Angels are the surprise runaway winners, graduating from a .259/.316/.391 line the first time through to .329/.374/.521 when seeing the same pitcher thrice-clearly their high-octane offense follows LA norms by arriving fashionably late. I’ve listed the entire league so you can get some sense of the relationship between increased productivity and the number of pitches seen. It’s dangerous to draw firm conclusions from one year of data, but there appears to be some non-trivial level of correlation between seeing lots of pitches and eventually solving the starting pitcher (e.g., a 0.46 correlation between P/PA and OBP change). Obviously the Red Sox are a huge outlier, though their unique drop in both SLG and OBP is undoubtedly linked to their complete and utter dominance (.278/.359/.498) during their first pass through the lineup.

As for the Phillies, they also place seventh in their league in both how much their OBP and SLG increase between their first and third spin against a given opposing starter. The Astros, Rockies, and Dodgers see the greatest increases, while the Pirates, Braves, and Cubs rank at the bottom. As with the AL, greater patience tends to get you higher on the NL list, but the Phillies themselves are not great evidence of this-they’re the third most patient team in the NL, but rank only seventh on this list.

All in all, it appears as if Verducci is correct that patient offenses are more likely to wear out a starting pitcher though, ironically, the Yankees and Phillies are not prime examples. The important point is not that having pitchers avoid facing batters multiple times is valid against the Yankees-the important point is that following that approach would be valid against virtually any team. Not only is John Smoltz right, he’s probably more right than he realizes. As the Cy Young winner himself notes, “nobody would ever do this,” mostly because of what “people think.” An idea like SOMA is far too different for a major league manager or front office to take seriously-or at least it will be until enough people like John Smoltz are running the show.

Thank you for reading

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Arrian
10/28
It's an interesting idea, but I have this nagging thought:

Doesn't this inevitably lead to the old "search for the pitcher who doesn't have it today" problem?
ckahrl
10/28
I'd have to agree, it's an issue we've already seen show up in this postseason as well. It's an interesting proposition, but there are attendant risks beyond just engendering some form of acceptance within the industry.
dmoriart
10/28
Cool article, and well-supported w/ the numbers. I didn't realize how real this effect is, throughout baseball.

In fact, I wasn't sure this effect would really be there at all, b/c any pitcher making it to the 3rd time through the lineup must be having some sort of effectiveness. Or, to turn it around, pitchers who get shelled early would only show up in the "1st time through" stats and not the "3rd time through" stats.

Interesting! Thanks, Ken.
sgturner65
10/28
Very interesting data, Ken. Do you think you could break it down to include just the top third or so of starters to see how much their numbers erode?
kenfunck
10/28
I did something along those lines (not by pitcher quality per se, but limited to pitchers with more starts -- assuming that better pitchers will stay in the rotation) in the comments section of the original article:

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=9228

If I can find the time in the next day or so, maybe I'll do a run filtering on some other starter quality metric.
oneofthem
10/28
a potential problem with the third time around data is that some starters, namely the bad ones, don't make it to the third time around.
oneofthem
10/28
but of course, when comparing across teams, this effect should more or less affect everyone equally, or not?
kenfunck
10/28
Teams with better offenses are more likely to knock pitchers out earlier, so the ones that survive for a third pass against the Yankees may be at least marginally better than the ones that face the Royals a third time. Then again, the Yankees possibly face more quality starters than the Royals. Not sure what the net effect would be.

One interesting data point I didn't touch on: look at the Yankees' numbers against relievers. They did significantly better against relievers than they did against starters the first time through. That's uncommon -- the league totals and the Phillies totals, where the relievers are similar to first time through starters, are the norm. I'm guessing the Yankees saw more than their fair share of long-relief/mop-up guys after getting out to large leads.
Richie
10/28
Well done, and very well-written, too. Thanks!
Oleoay
10/28
SOMA is the kind of thing a rebuilding team with a weak rotation like the Nationals should do. Then, they could parlay all those journeymen SOMAs to other teams as middle relievers and get a prospect in exchange.
AndrewP
10/28
Never even thought about this approach before.

This is why I love this website. :)

It sounds like a really interesting idea to try, but I can't imagine anyone actually doing it, for fear of "offending" someone in the rotation. I love baseball as much as I can love anything non-family related, but baseball players can be a little sensitive.
hmckay
10/28
I believe that Tony La Russa experimented with this idea in his time with the White Sox in the 1980s. It was quietly abandoned after a relatively short period. This is not a new invention: it was used and discarded. You should check your history before proclaiming originality.
kenfunck
10/28
It was TLR with the A's in 1993. He said he was going to place his pitchers (both starters and relievers) into three groups of three, and have them each pitch three innings every third game. What he did wasn't quite exactly that, but in any case after a week he pulled the plug, saying:

"We got some information. I think it’s got some value, but I’m very uncomfortable knowing the starting pitcher is going out there without a chance to win. I don’t think that’s real healthy."

It's not exactly SOMA, but it's the last time I'm aware of that a major league team did something even remotely like it.
Oleoay
10/28
I think Tony did it once with the Cardinals too near the end of the season... I think it was late in the Matt Morris era.
buffum
10/28
As a Cleveland fan, I will tell you that Jeremy Sowers is the perfect pitcher to try this with. Check his inning, pitch, and times faced splits. For as much scorn as he generally attracts, the fact is that Sowers is actually a Real Asset the first time or so through the order, holding hitters to a very low OPS in general ... and when he turns into a newt, he turns HARD.

Pairing him up would leverage him as an ASSET (not just a LAIM, but a real net PLUS), rather than insisting that "eventually he'll figure out how to go deeper into ballgames, this time I mean it, you betcha."

Nice legwork, BTW.