I am traveling in San Diego this week, and I have the chance to go see the Padres play the St. Louis Cardinals this evening. Jon Garland gets the start for the Padres. In an interview with Corey Brock from mlb.com on Monday, Garland was asked about his reaction to Phil Hughes enduring 41 foul balls on last Saturday against the Mets, which was the most since Garland’s 42 foul balls in 2005. Garland was partially quoted as saying that “allowing so many foul balls can be unnerving for a pitcher.”
I took a quick look at some data on the number of foul balls in an at-bat and analyzed the ultimate result of the at bat to determine if batters have more success if they are able to keep the at-bat alive longer by fouling off more pitches. The answer is that it seems to be unnerving to both the pitcher and the batter.
Batting Average
I looked at the batting average based on the number of foul balls in an at-bat using the 2005 – 2009 seasons. The batting average is shown below.
Number of Foul Balls - Batting Average
0 - .295
1 - .230
2 - .208
3 - .217
4 - .228
5 - .228
6 - .229
The batting average drops by between 65 and 87 points after just one foul ball. This suggests that as a batter fouls off more pitches, he is less likely to successfully get a hit. This could perhaps be because the batter becomes a bit “unnerved” or frustrated after fouling off a few pitches. This unnerving also be seen in the strikeout rate increasing as the number of foul balls increases.
Number of Foul Balls - Strikeout Rate
0 - 9.5%
1 - 26.5%
2 - 33.0%
3 - 30.3%
4 - 27.7%
5 - 27.2%
6 - 26.4%
The strikeout rate triples as the number of foul balls increases from 0 to 2 or more. This could actually increase the confidence of the pitcher, knowing it is easier to strike the batter out.
On Base Percentage
The on base percentage of a batter as the number of foul balls increases is shown below.
Number of Foul Balls - On Base Percentage
0 - .359
1 - .296
2 - .286
3 - .316
4 - .337
5 - .350
6 - .343
The on base percentage decreases as a batter fouls off one or two balls, but then begins to increase with the third foul and ends up near the on base percentage for the 0 foul on base percentage level. This suggests that as a player fouls off more pitches they are more likely to end up on base. The obvious reason for this is that as there are more pitches thrown, it is more likely that the pitcher walks the batter. The rate of batters either walked or hit by a pitch by the number of foul balls is shown below.
Number of Foul Balls - Walk Rate
0 - 9.9%
1 - 8.7%
2 - 10.0%
3 - 12.7%
4 - 14.2%
5 - 16.0%
6 - 14.8%
The walk rate increases from 10% to as high as 16% as more pitches that are fouled off. This could be some evidence of the “unnerving” of the pitcher.
It seems that as the stress of any sports situation increases, nerves can possibly come into play. As a batter and a pitcher get deeper into an at bat, nerves can play a part on both sides.
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Foul balls are correlated with the ball-strike count, so most of what you are picking up here (at least for the 0-2 fouls numbers) is just the fact that getting strikes generally makes it more likely to strike out or make an out. You need to either adjust by ball-strike count or consider only the numbers from 2 and higher to figure out what is actually going on here.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the first commentor that the early foul balls are strikes, so you move closer to a strike out. But I think it is very interesting to see these numbers for AVG and OBP and how they start to rise back up as there are more foul balls (and the reverse for the strikeout rate).
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