View Single Post
Old 08-30-2019, 05:37 AM   #40
Anyone
Major Leagues
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Posts: 405
Quote:
Originally Posted by RonCo View Post
And, yes, I know that the 4.5 K/9 rule of thumb will miss a few guys. To BirdWatcher's point, generalizations are pretty much always wrong somewhere. The one that always registers for me is Randy Jones, who struck out almost no one, but still succeeded by being off the chart in what OOTP would call movement and control.
And for how long was Randy Jones successful, compared to, say, Nolan Ryan (and Ryan's control wasn't great)?

A pitcher can have a long, successful career with a poor walk rate or a poor HR's allowed rate. It isn't easy, but you could find guys who'd rate 3/10 at their peak on control or movement but had 10 year productive careers. You can't find anyone who'd rank 3/10 in their best year at getting K's who had long, productive careers. Even Randy Jones had two years over 5 K's/9 innings.

Randy Jones had a total of 4 years (I just looked it up) with an ERA+ above 100 (as in his ERA was lower than the league average ERA). 1973 was one of those years, and he struck out 5.0/9 innings in 1973, so he had a total of 3 good years with a low K rate. His second highest ERA+ was 119, so he had exactly one year in which he was a star with a low K rate.

Nolan Ryan had five years in which he led the league in walks allowed while having an ERA+ above 100. He led the league in walks allowed 3 other years and was slightly below average in ERA+, at 98.

I write this despite that stylistically I like crafty ground ball pitchers better than power pitchers. But the fact is you can have a 27 year career like Ryan did with poor control (when he led the league in walks he didn't have the worst control in the league; the guys who really couldn't get it over at all didn't get to pitch enough to lead the league in walks; but his control was poor).

BABIP is mostly fielding. The pitcher's main control over batting average allowed, by far, is by getting K's. If you don't get K's you'll have a high batting average allowed, and while batting average was overrated for years before sabermetrics showed us that Darrell Evans can have a low batting average and by a great player and Rob Deer can have a very low batting average and have value, it's still true that if you hit .330 you're a good hitter even with very poor walks and power, because you'd have a .660 OPS if you never walked and never hit more than a single-- but a guy with no plate discipline walks 20 times a year and a guy with no power may not (before the last 20 years anyway) have hit any home runs, but he hit doubles at the least. If someone hit .330 and only drew 20 walks and only hit 20 doubles, no triples, no home runs, he might be a bad hitter (at least for DH/1B/LF/RF), but you have to go to extremes there that maybe no one's average has been as empty as that.

But that's what the guy who gets no K's has to do. He has to never give up home runs and never walk anyone, which no pitcher can do, becuase he's making his opponents .330 hitters.

And no one will keep his job as a hitter hitting .190. There could be someone who takes Rob Deer to the extreme and hit so many home runs and draw so many walks he might have value doing that, but no one has done that and lasted. If you're making so poor and rare of contact to hit .190 regularly, it's unlikely that with whatever strength you might have you have enough power to hit all those home runs, and almost as unlikely that you have a super eye for the strike zone to have tons of walks.

But you can have a star career with way below average power, as Ozzie Smith did with almost no home runs, or even at an offense-first position, as Tony Gwynn did (Smith is an all-time great because of defense, but Gwynn's defense wasn't exceptional for his fairly easy position, and he's not a legend like Ozzie but was a very good player for a long time). And lots of hitters, some undeserving but not all, have been seen as stars despite very low walk rates.

The pitcher who never records K's is the pitching equivalent of the .190 hitter. He'll give up lots of hits and can't give up so few home runs and walks to make up for that, just like Tony Gwynn got so many hits he was going to be good even though he didn't contribute that much in other ways (and can be overrated due to those hits, but they're enough he was going to be good even with his limited contributions in other areas).
Anyone is offline   Reply With Quote