Ahead in the Count: Th... (10/28)
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November 9, 2009 Ahead in the CountCole Being Cole?
Two weeks ago, I wrote an article on Cole Hamels on the day that the Phillies clinched the National League pennant, explaining in detail that I do not believe that there is anything wrong with Cole Hamels, and that the difference between 2008 and 2009 is abnormally good luck in the first and abnormally bad luck in the second. The first clue was that he had similar peripheral statistics in 2008 and 2009. He struck out 21 percent of hitters in both years, and walked just over five percent of hitters in 2009 after walking just under six percent of them in 2008. His ground-ball rate stayed roughly the same, rising from 41 to 43 percent. The difference came from his BABIP jumping from an incredibly fortunate .262 to an incredibly unfortunate .321. It has been shown many times before that BABIP is a statistic with low persistence, and that pitchers see their performances jump up and down constantly with respect to this statistic. As a result, much of year-to-year fluctuation in ERA is tied to fluctuations in BABIP. Unsurprisingly, Hamels ERA went from 3.09 in 2008 to 4.32 in 2009. As Hamels’ peripherals indicate an ERA around 3.65, it seems likely that he had a mixture of good luck in 2008 and bad luck in 2009 that belied his ERA. This is not at all atypical. Given the number of balls in play that Hamels allowed, the standard deviation of his BABIP should be .020 in any given year, meaning that he was barely in the top ten percent of pitchers with respect to good luck in 2008, and barely in the top ten percent of pitchers with respect to bad luck in 2009. This type of fluctuation is typical. Looking at other pitchers through history, you can see that their ERA often bounces up and down, and in so far as pitchers can't control BABIP, it's BABIP that is frequently the culprit. In my article from October 21, I took this into more detail. I discovered that Hamels allowed no more hitters to hit the ball to the outfield—52 percent in 2008 and 51 percent in 2009. Although Hamels himself later claimed that the problem was a failure to put away hitters with two strikes, citing his hit rate on two-strike counts, Hamels may not know that he struck as many of them out in this situation: 41 percent in 2008, and 40 percent in 2009. Not only that, he induced slightly more popups in 2009 than in 2008. Hitters also pulled, hit balls to center, and hit balls the opposite way with the same frequency as well. Predictably, this article was received quite well with the Baseball Prospectus crowd, and rather skeptically by many other baseball fans. The value of on-base percentage has slowly gained ground with more casual fans, but analyzing pitchers with an ERA that is belied by their peripheral statistics in the face of very good or bad BABIP is not something that casual fans take to all that willingly. Many writers tried to explain alternative theories, often citing Hamels’ psychology as fatally flawed in some way. They claimed he was not paying attention to the game as much, that he was too obsessed with his celebrity, and when confronted with this logic, I would simply ask why that type of difficulty would not affect his strikeout or walk rates. I still have not heard a good answer, and recently tweeted, "Enough of people who don't know baseball, Hamels, or psychology explaining the effect of Hamels' mindset on his performance!" Meanwhile, my article was cited in the blog of Philadelphia Inquirer beat writer Andy Martino, who understood my point but took issue with my conclusions. He also took strong issue with Rob Neyer's claim that fellow Inquirer writer Jim Salisbury was ignorant of statistics in claiming that Hamels should pick up another pitch. Specifically, Neyer said baseball writers had a "sick, 20th century obsession with wins and losses and ERA." Martino quipped, "Isn’t it so, like, 2004 to say that newspaper writers don't care about statistical analysis?" This is a fair point when it comes to Martino, who I would like to stress is very adept at statistical analysis. However, Martino needs to be more honest about his fellow Inquirer staff writers. The newspaper frequently tried to attribute Ryan Howard’s World Series performance to psychological problems as well, without even mentioning the left-handedness of his opponents. This is the same paper in which Frank Fitzpatrick wrote that Hamels does not have "enough Philly in him." In this article, Fitzpatrick lauded players such as Pete Rote, currently banished from baseball in gambling, and Lenny Dykstra, who ran into problems gambling in his own way, who Fitzpatrick claimed were Philly enough. Instead, "Hamels, it's always apparent, makes his living with his arm, not his hands," Fitzpatrick claimed.
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Could part of it be as simple as the fact he gave up 9 unearned runs last year and only 2 this year? If my calculations are right, that's about a .35 difference in ERA.
However, all his BP scouting reports contain mention of incoinsistency and being very good when good but allowing things to snowball when bad. 2 more snowballs over a course of a season could alter his stats.
unearned runs are excluded in the calculation of ERA (Earned Run Average)
Yes. Perhaps I didn't write clearly enough. What I meant to say is that he had a greater proportion of unearned runs in 2008 than in 2009. This is probably random noise but it is noise that led to a lower era in 08 than 09.