Fangraphs: Is It Time To Reevaluate the Value of a Walk?

[weams]

http://www.fangraphs.com/community/is-it-time-to-re-evaluate-the-value-of-the-walk/

Now the walk is deemed as an extremely valuable tool, and organizations will often pay a heavy hand for someone with a good walk rate. But what if the value of the walk was dropping, what if a walk in today's game was not nearly as valuable as it use to be? Baseball you see is a living organism and is prone to change, just because something was valuable in the past, doesn't mean it's valuable in the present. We constantly need to be adjusting to the value of certain strategies and skills in order to stay ahead of the game.

Change. It's what the world is made of. To be cutting edge requires an open mind.

[Can_of_corn]

http://www.fangraphs.com/community/is-it-time-to-re-evaluate-the-value-of-the-walk/

Change. It's what the world is made of. To be cutting edge requires an open mind.

It also falls into another of my pet theories.

That in a short series, you are better off facing the starting pitcher three times through the lineup then you are running up his pitch count and facing a relief pitcher.

[weams]

It also falls into another of my pet theories.

That in a short series, you are better off facing the starting pitcher three times through the lineup then you are running up his pitch count and facing a relief pitcher.

I agree with that theory completely. Sometimes even during the regular season.

[Can_of_corn]

I agree with that theory completely. Sometimes even during the regular season.

Any three game series would be a short series unless it was the rare back to back. If you tire out a team's pen who benefits? You or the next team on the schedule?

[weams]

There are in fact several possibilities for the drop in correlation between BB% and OBP. Perhaps it’s the shift, perhaps it’s the low run environment, perhaps it’s high rise in strikeouts. I think another interesting element to look at it is how are hitters doing later in the count. Considering the rise in strikeouts, it’s probably not unreasonable to assume that hitters are performing worse than ever when hitting with two strikes.

It had to happen Joey.

[Can_of_corn]

I agree with that theory completely. Sometimes even during the regular season.

Post season is another animal altogether.

I wouldn't worry about pitch counts then since every team has a starter or two stashed in the pen and with the off days it takes extreme circumstances to get into the back of a team's pen.

[Larry18]

It also falls into another of my pet theories.

That in a short series, you are better off facing the starting pitcher three times through the lineup then you are running up his pitch count and facing a relief pitcher.

Mitchel Lichtman did a study on this topic and agrees with you 100%. Link to article below, I don't know if you need a subscription or not.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22156

[riprulz8]

It also falls into another of my pet theories.

That in a short series, you are better off facing the starting pitcher three times through the lineup then you are running up his pitch count and facing a relief pitcher.

Except if Joba's in the bullpen.[emoji1]

[Can_of_corn]

Mitchel Lichtman did a study on this topic and agrees with you 100%. Link to article below, I don't know if you need a subscription or not.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22156

Some really good stuff there on how fatigue isn't a significant factor in TTOP.

[weams]

Some really good stuff there on how fatigue isn't a significant factor in TTOP.

If, like many of us, you’re a prolific baseball blog reader, you’ve probably heard a lot lately about the “times through the order” penalty (TTOP). For those of you who have no idea what that is, here is a quote from page 187 of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball: “As the game goes on, the hitter has a progressively greater advantage over the starting pitcher.” Essentially, the more times a batter faces a pitcher during a game, the better he does at the plate.

The way the TTOP is traditionally measured is by looking at a starting pitcher’s performance using, say, wOBA against, the first time through the batting order, the second time, and so on. (Like TAv, wOBA is an all-in-one offensive rate statistic, but on the OBP scale instead of the BA scale.) Theoretically, a starter’s wOBA should be about the same for batters 1-9, and then 10-18, etc., since the pitcher is obviously the same, and in most cases the batters are more or less the same (I don’t include pitchers batting or pinch hitters). You might even think that a pitcher improves as the game goes on, as he gets thoroughly warmed up—especially on a cold night—and gets a feel for all of his pitches, at least until he perhaps enters a decline phase due to fatigue, assuming he is allowed to stay in the game that long.

But that’s not what we see, as the last letter of the acronym TTOP implies. Here are some actual numbers from The Book (p. 186, Table 81.) based on data from 1999-2002. The total sample is 469,721 PA between starting pitchers and starting lineups, not including IBB and bunts.

Yes. It's a great article.

[Number5]

Look for your pitch and hit it hard. Look for a hit. Don't look for a walk. Take the walk if it is given to you, but look to hit the ball in your zone. My pet peeve is seeing a hitter let a grooved 3-1 fat pitch go by. You're not going to see a better pitch than that to hit on 3-2... Hit the ball!

[BarclaySouthway]

There are really only 2 seasons that are raising the issue: 2012 and 2014. I think you could make the case that walks were worth less those years, but it's too soon to make a generalization. In 2013 the walk/runs correlation was right in line with historic norms.

I'll bet there is a stronger walk/run correlation in high-homerun environments. I'll also bet that walks are more valuable to a team like the Orioles, who hit 211 homers last year, than to a team like the Royals.

[Beef Supreme]

There are really only 2 seasons that are raising the issue: 2012 and 2014. I think you could make the case that walks were worth less those years, but it's too soon to make a generalization. In 2013 the walk/runs correlation was right in line with historic norms.

I'll bet there is a stronger walk/run correlation in high-homerun environments. I'll also bet that walks are more valuable to a team like the Orioles, who hit 211 homers last year, than to a team like the Royals.

This reminds me of another article that claimed teams that get on base at a high percentage benefit more from walks than teams that do not get on base at a high percentage.

[Nevermore]

http://www.fangraphs.com/community/is-it-time-to-re-evaluate-the-value-of-the-walk/

Change. It's what the world is made of. To be cutting edge requires an open mind.

Why exactly is a walk less valuable now than in the past?

[weams]

Why exactly is a walk less valuable now than in the past?

As you might be able to tell although less drastic the correlation between BB% and OBP has similar results to the correlation between BB% and R/G. Again the part of the graph, which you should focus on is the two outlier data points. Again they are 2012 (R=0.2317) and 2014 (R=0.3570). This at this point gives us some explanation for the two outlier data points in the previous graph.

Essentially what one needs to understand from this is, since BB% is becoming less correlated with OBP, it’s evidently going to have a lesser correlation with R/G. Since the primary value of a BB is the effect it has on the OBP (obviously though not the only). Also generally and through the 20 years of data there has been a strong correlation between BB% and OBP. Apart from 2012 and 2014 where their correlation is weaker, although still a positive correlation.

So now we need to understand this, if the walk has a small correlation with OBP, then its value will be significantly affected.