Chris Bassitt on velocity

[metirish]

I find this interesting, I've only been watching baseball about 25 years , but, there has always been very hard throwers , I always remember Kevin Brown , threw hard but with movement and not lights out hard , lights out then was someone throwing 98, now that seems to be the low end

[Edgy MD]

Most tweets now seem to be fake polls.

[smg58]

It's been my impression for a while that people are over-obsessed with the radar gun, with detrimental long-term results for pitchers. So I don't think Bassitt is saying anything all that radical. There have always been a handful of hard throwers, but I don't know if the number of pitchers who can hit triple digits without suffering a major injury sooner rather than later has actually increased from Nolan Ryan's day.

Now I don't have data to back that up, but we all know that Bassitt was teammates with Exhibit A. Did the best pitcher in baseball need to add to his velocity? No, but he did, and while the short-term results were stunning, maybe we'll see him pitch again.

My hypothesis is that somebody (I'm guessing in Tampa) figured out that you could get good seasons out of otherwise so-so pitchers by getting them to throw harder. I'm not sure how or why this approach spread to pitchers whose value was established, but now even good pitchers run out of gas by their third time through the line-up and still seem to get hurt more often. Snell just got $30M per year and he can't go six.

I remember we signed a reliever (forgetting his name) a couple of years ago who had pitched in Cleveland when Mickey Calloway was their pitching coach, and had credited Calloway with turning his career around by getting him to add two mph and was happy to come here. He began the season on the IL and never got right.

[Edgy MD]

I have trouble buying the third-time-through-the-lineup business.

If a pitcher is holding guys to a .500 OPS the first two times through the lineup, and it goes up to .650 the third time through the lineup, you can frame that as a decline of 30%, but I say that's still an effective pitcher, moreso than your standard middle reliever, and I would encourage my team to try to squeeze every out of him that they can.

Also, pitchers tend to get pulled after giving up a baserunner, so if a guy only gets three batters — probably good ones — through the third time in the lineup, and he gets two outs and then gives up a double, his OPS against is 1.000, but is that sample really that meaningful?

[Edgy MD]

In 2022, Jacob deGrom gave up a miserly .437 OPS his first time two times through the order, and a .936 OPS his third time through the order, so ... YEAH! get him out of there!

Except, in 2021, he gave up an even stingier .422 OPS his first time two times through the order, and then really drilled down to allow a .332 OPS (!!) his third time through the order.

Which guy is truly representative? Or maybe, considering he was only allowed to face 42 and 60 batters respectively a third time in those two years, analysts have possibly asked us to overthink the issue.

[MFS62]

I agree.
From MLB.com today:

By now, everyone knows about the ‘third time through the order’ effect in the Major Leagues, the one that’s helped shorten starting pitcher outings because the numbers so clearly show that a pitcher is less effective the third time he faces a batter. While it’s a recent discussion, it’s not a recent effect – even Bob Gibson, for example, was 27 points of OPS worse the second time through than he was the first time, and then 48 points worse the third time than the second time.

Yes, his performance was 48 pts of OPS worse his third time through the lineup, but it I think it was still better than the people who may have relieved him. And I would have loved to have seen what would have happened when the manager came out to relieve him after twice through the order when he was still shutting people down.

https://www.mlb.com/news/minor-league-s ... g=32496098

Later

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I remember we signed a reliever (forgetting his name) a couple of years ago who had pitched in Cleveland when Mickey Calloway was their pitching coach, and had credited Calloway with turning his career around by getting him to add two mph and was happy to come here. He began the season on the IL and never got right.

Anthony Swarzak

[Edgy MD]

Also, when you pull your best starter in the sixth, you're replacing him with your third-, fourth-, or fifth-best reliever. Possibly worse, depending on who is available.

Why pay $31 million for Blake Snell if you'd prefer to turn to Jeff Brigham when things start to get tense?

[smg58]

With Gibson, the career OPS against him was .653 the third time through and .657 the fourth. Certainly not terrible, but you might have a reliever or two who can do better. But that was for his whole career. In 1968, it was .463 the third time through and .555 the fourth (and beyond).

[Edgy MD]

I would guess (and I'm certainly willing to check and confirm) that the Cardinals rarely had a third-best reliever likely to outdo a .653.

[metirish]

A few have gone down already this early season

[metirish]

[Edgy MD]

I'm not part of the culture in favor of the clock, but I'm not sure the causalities Strider described can be supported by study. If he really believes it, he should encourage his union to do their own research.

[metirish]

Right, I'm surprised that they haven't done that ( maybe they are )

[metirish]

Noted orthopedic surgeon Dr.Steven Gelbs

[metirish]

Vote for Pedro

[metirish]

[smg58]

Running backs in football have it easy in comparison.

[Edgy MD]

I don't know if I can agree with that. I'd rather live through UCL surgery than knee reconstruction and Post-Concussion Syndrome.

[metsmarathon]

holy fuck. yeah, a million-billion-infinity-times what edgy said.

you can slice and dice my arm open and gimme with mix-and-matched ligaments and tendons and a year of PT a billion times over instead of knee replacements that wear out fast on my broken, battered body, with a heaping spponful of CTE to boot.

hell, skip the TJS and you can live a happy life like it ne'er happened. maybe your shoulder is a bit tender down the road? that's not so bad compared to decartilaged knees grinding on each other for every painful step you take over the last 60 years of your life.