Strikeout and Hits Allowed/Movement Rating

[HoustonGM]

This has always been something that's gotten under my skin. It seemsas thought strikeout rates for pitchers are inversely related to their hit rates. The higher strikeout pitcher seem to allow more hits.

I've always been suspect of this because if you raise predicted strikeouts, whilst leaving hits alone, the power rating increases while the movement rating decreases, and the movement rating plays a large role in the amount of hits a pitcher allows. I never really thought much of it, figuring that the predicted hits would play more of a role than the actual movement rating itself, but I've begun to think otherwise.

Now, I don't have any real numbers to back this up. It's just something I've noticed over time that has always bugged me a bit. I don't think that the movement rating, if it indeed is the main factor in hits allowed, should be affected by the pitcher's strikeout rate. If it does, it should be the other way around. Strikeout pitchers are often the hardest to hit - less balls in play means less of a chance of a hit. Making a pitcher more capable of striking hitters out should increase movement rating, if the movement rating, and not just the predicted hits, is the main thing behind the simulated results of pitcher's hits allowed.

It also seems as though young pitchers with a good power rating for their age develop their movement far less than other pitchers. Again, just an observation and may or may not be true.

This is far from a conclusive study, but let's take a look at 2007. Here are the top 10 pitchers in K/9, with their batting average against in parenthesis:

Erik Bedard 10.93 (.212)
Scott Kazmir 10.41 (.251)
Jake Peavy 9.67 (.208)
Johan Santana 9.66 (.225)
A.J. Burnett 9.56 (.214)
Javier Vazquez 8.85 (.242)
Oliver Perez 8.85 (.229)
Daisuke Matsuzaka 8.84 (.246)
Josh Beckett 8.70 (.245)
Cole Hamels 8.69 (.237) and Chris Young .192 (8.69)

The top 10 pitchers in batting average against (K/9 in parenthesis):

Chris Young .192 (8.69)
Jake Peavy .208 (9.67)
Erik Bedard .212 (10.93)
A.J. Burnett .214 (9.56)
Johan Santana .225 (9.66)
Oliver Perez .229 (8.85)
Dustin McGowan .230 (7.64)
Justin Verlander .233 (8.17)
Carlos Zambrano .233 (7.36)
Rich Hill .235 (8.45)

Now, let's take one of my simulated seasons (its in the future - 2011):

Erik Bedard 11.32 (.218)
Donald Veal 10.08 (.262)
Will Inman 9.18 (.265)
Johan Santana 9.08 (.227)
Luke Hochevar 9.07 (.256)
Jake Peavy 8.95 (.207)
Jeff Manship 8.77 (.274)
Sam LeCure 8.66 (.249)
Felix Hernandez 8.63 (.245)
Joba Chamberlain 8.62 (.259)

BAA:
Jake Peavy .207 (8.95)
Tim Hudson .208 (4.79)
Jason Bergmann .210 (7.00)
Daniel Cabrera .214 (6.35)
JD Durbin .214 (5.68)
Chad Billingsley .217 (7.71)
Erik Bedard .218 (11.32)
Dan Haren .218 (6.84)
Homer Bailey .219 (6.50)
Adam Miller .227 (7.83)

The differences are obvious. In 2007, there was a good amount of overlap between the two top 10 lists, and those that weren't in both lists still posted good numbers in the other stat. In the sim, there's barely any overlap, and the strikeout list features pitchers with high batting averages against them, and the batting average against list features pitchers with low strikeout rates.

For some reason, I just really think it all goes back to that basic principle where, leaving everything else the same, raising predicted strikeouts, while increasing power, lowers movement.

I'm not really sure what sort of "studies" or "tests" I could do to dig deeper into this, so any ideas would be appreciated. I'm just posting this out there for some other opinions and thoughts. High strikeout rates correlate strongly with low hit rates in real life, and vice versa, while in Mogul, the seeming correlation is much weaker.

Have you noticed similar trends in your league? Do you believe that increasing a pitcher's strikeout ability should result in a decrease in their movement, the primary rating behind the amounts of hits the pitcher allows, or do you believe the opposite - a higher strikeout rate should lead to a lower hit rate?

Do you think that young power pitchers seem to gain movement at a far slower rate than non-power pitchers, thus, by the time they're in the majors, the power guys are hittable, while the non-power guys are less hittable? You'll also notice that in the sim, the guys with high strikeout rates and low batting averages against them were guys that were already stars at the start of the game - Jake Peavy, Erik Bedard, Johan Santana. The young guys all developed with good strikeout rates, but average to below average batting averages against. This does lead me to believe there's an issue in development.

And this one probably can only be answered by Clay - which is the more important factor in simulating the number of hits a pitcher allows - his predicted hits allowed, or his Movement rating?

[ohms_law]

hummm... interesting. And, something that I've never thought to look into, either. Definitely something that's worth looking into.

[NYDodgers]

YES I completely agree.

I posted a thread earlier about how power is an almost negative stat for me when I look at pitchers. I love the notion of a strikeout pitcher, but the best starting pitchers always have stats of something like 78/96/77/95. They also pitch longer as they're able to keep their pitch counts down, and the small positive correlation between endurance and power does not make up for it.

[HoustonGM]

YES I completely agree.

I posted a thread earlier about how power is an almost negative stat for me when I look at pitchers. I love the notion of a strikeout pitcher, but the best starting pitchers always have stats of something like 78/96/77/95. They also pitch longer as they're able to keep their pitch counts down, and the small positive correlation between endurance and power does not make up for it.
That's another issue that I mentioned but in the wrong thread. Here's that post:


To expand on the pitch count thing a bit, it seems as though power pitchers tend to rack up really high pitch counts unless they have a very high control rating (like a C.C. Sabathia), even when they aren't walking any batters. By really high, I mean, consistently 20+ pitches an inning, rendering guys like Jake Peavy as 5, sometimes 6, inning pitchers...

Pitch counts should be affected by control, but power shouldn't have a negative impact on pitch counts, except in cases of pitchers that also have an extremely high control rating. Also, I think the affect control has on pitch counts may be a little high. It seems that these pitchers routinely throw 7-10 pitches an at bat, even when they're not walking batters. This indicates to me that batters are able to "foul off" bad control pitchers better than they do good control pitchers, and this shouldn't be the case. Obviously control means that the pitcher throws more balls, which increases pitch count already. This effect that Control seems to have on pitch counts, though, goes beyond just 3 ball counts. Needless to say, let's cease conversation in this thread on the pitch count topic. I'm copying these posts to a new thread for that, and this thread will be specifically for strikeouts and movement rating/hits allowed. Here's that thread. (http://forum.sportsmogul.com/showthread.php?p=900925)