Put the Ball in Play Boys

[bedir than average]

The Seattle Times: Sports: Mariners Blog

Anyone wondering what manager Mike Hargrove told his pitchers and catchers behind closed doors the other day as training camp opened? Well, it went something like this: Get opponents to put the ball in play.

That was essentially it. The Mariners' braintrust has staked its future on the ability of the team's defense to turn ground balls into outs. If that doesn't happen, then all of those winter acquisitions of rather-ordinary-looking ground ball pitchers will wind up generating some rather-ordinary-looking returns. In order for anything better to happen, the ball has to be put in play by opposing hitters. Sounds simple, but it wasn't last season. On too many nights, the Mariners saw too many pitches thrown by their starters. Their relievers as well.

Its an intriguing theory. But considering the park doesn't really help groundballs, unless they grow the grass up?, this ignores their old mantra concerning getting pitchers tailor made for the park (Washburn).

Also, with an excellent left side of the infield I'm fairly confident in success there, but Sexson just doesn't have the reach that Olerud did even though Richie is what a foot taller?

Here it is hit it

That might work but the following performances last year by the starters in the HR/F category worries me as Felix is the guy this team will be counting on in the Ace role of Ace+4Fours

Felix 16.4%|15.4%
Washburn 9.3%|8.8% (He's an oddity as a Flyball pitcher who doesn't give up the HR as often as expected)
Weaver 14.9%|10.1%
Batista 9.2|9.3%
Rameriz 9%|13.7%

11-12% is average

Much thanks to Fangraphs

[bedir than average]

More on the Pitch to Contact theory

The Seattle Times: Sports: Mariners Blog

Now, pitching to contact doesn't mean simply lobbing the ball down the middle of the plate. But it does mean not being afraid to pitch to your strengths. If you are a ground ball pitcher, then let the hitters put the ball on the ground. The only way this team has a shot at winning anything this season is if that happens. Jeff Weaver got the message. In Tuesday's intrasquad game, he got out of the first inning on only eight pitches by notching three consecutive groundouts. Pitching to contact means trying to get ahead in the count by throwing strikes and letting the ball get hit if it has to be hit. It means avoiding the "nibbling" syndrome that sees too many pitchers trying to paint the corners with perfect pitches. Nibbling is no way to be economical in your pitch count. Pitching to contact is.

later

The point of this is to show that getting hitters to put more wood on the ball will not automatically mean more runs crossing the plate. This is especially true in Seattle, where the presence of a talented infield should mean more outs for pitchers unafraid to have the ball put on the ground. If that happens, things could get interesting in the AL West. But it isn't as simple as it sounds and could very well remain a work in progress as the season unfolds.

U.S.S. Mariner » Pitching to contact - Seattle Mariners and general baseball discussion

This intersects with the Mariners in two ways: they’ve got a fine infield defense, Ho and Batista both sport career G:F ratios of 1.67, Weaver’s not as heavy but his career’s at 1.16 … but Jarrod Wasburn’s career rate is .77. He’s been better in recent years, but he’s not the groundballer the other guys are. This could be dangerous advice for him.

Moreover, while the “pitch down in the zone” advice sounds great, the real issue is going to be whether they continue to preach fastball, fastball, fastball to their staff. These guys get their grounders on their good breaking pitches. If the team wants them to pitch to contact and pitch to contact with their fastballs, that’s trouble too.

The Seattle Times: Sports: Mariners Blog

We talked a lot in the previous post about "pitching to contact" and that's exactly what the only two bonafide Seattle starters to have pitched intrasquad, Batitsa and Jeff Weaver, have done so far. The pair have recorded five of their six outs on ground balls and each needed less than 10 pitches to get out of their respective innings. It's only intrasquad and things get far tougher from here. But it's a start.

Dave Cameron's got better hopes than I, but he does see Washburn as the biggest miss with this theory.

[Goose]

Jeff Sullivan at LL did an article about how Felix is at his most dominating when he's goes more for groundballs than strikeouts.His innings are quicker, he throws less pitches, is able to go deeper, and generally allows less runs. Now unlike our other groundball pitchers on the staff, that's not something he has to rely on, but he does seem to be more effective that way.

Here we go.

Here's an excerpt.

Here's the thing about Felix: when he's at his most dominant, you won't necessarily see it in his strikeout rate like you'd expect. You'll see it in his groundballs. I took Felix's 35 career starts and organized them into three groups two times - once by strikeout rate (high, middle, low) and once by groundball rate (high, middle, low). I then calculated his RA (Run Average; like ERA, only including unearned runs) in each group to figure out which component is most vital to his success. Observe:

11 starts with highest K rate (30.7%): 3.72 RA
12 starts with middle K rate (20.4%): 3.09
12 starts with lowest K rate (15.4%): 5.89

11 starts with highest GB rate (75.1%): 1.87 RA
12 starts with middle GB rate (61.7%): 3.27
12 starts with lowest GB rate (44.5%: 8.10

Obviously, Felix needs to miss a few bats; when he's not striking out as many batters as usual, he's getting lit up. But what he doesn't need to do is try to miss as many bats as possible, because if the past is any indication, that kind of approach actually works against him a little bit. Felix is still a good pitcher when he's striking out a bunch of hitters, but that's not the root of his effectiveness.