"Times Arround the Order": The Truth Identified!

Also with many pitchers trying to max out each pitch these days it’s not surprising they don’t have the stamina to sustain performance for longer outings

I wonder how much correlation there is between stamina and body types. Can it be pre-assed based on body type?

Maybe I am being dense, but I am missing what the connection is between pitch use and stamina. Is the idea that a tiring pitcher will go to their weaker offerings more often? Why?

As for Houck, he looks about as good as any pitcher in the world in the first 3 innings or so. If he just had a regular gig of pitching 3 innings every four days he could rack up 120 IP, which is already 2/3rds of a starting pitcher's load. He could be super valuable in that role, and a real weapon in the playoffs.

Is there any way to incorporate average FB velocity into those splits in a way that might show the pitchers that aren't performing despite pitch mix are actually losing steam? I guess they could also be retaining FB velocity but losing grip strength (and spin) or lacking consistency on release point I'm just wondering if any of the pitch level measurables are also changing in a way that could indicate stamina over familiarity.

Stamina makes a lot more sense to me than familiarity. A pitcher gets tired (even in a long inning) and they start to overthrow to maintain velocity. Their command and control vanish and they begin walking people they had been putting away with five pitches. They begin to miss over the plate and get hit.
If it's primarily familiarity you would think everyone knows who Houck is by now and they would all be laying off the slider and his sinker and just sit on his four seam.

I agree with this. There are very few things in sports, especially when more than one person is involved in outcomes, that are single variate.

Stamina certainly could be a contributing factor, but we'd need an agreed upon definition of "stamina" as it relates to pitching first. If teams (or even a team) did have such a definition and could convince pitchers, and especially starters, to wear biometric devices to measure the contributing factors that define stamina (such as heart rate, respiration, lactic acid build-up between pitches, etc.), then they would be able to see if there's at least a correlation within a specified sample (i.e. their pitchers).

Even with this, however, we can't discount the inputs from batters, or even catchers or umpires (at least, the latter until RoboUmps are integrated and there's more consistency to the strike zone and calls throughout an at bat and the game). A stamina definition and real time measurements, however, would at least give teams a (presumably) significant factor to account for in-game adjustments using that factor alone. But I doubt pitchers/the union would agree to biometric measurements anytime soon as they might affect compensation in free agency or even arbitration.

Houck trailed Strider in xwOBA just .226 to .202, and (for what it's worth, but it's what most folks are looking at), topped him in wOBA, .183 to .223.

Houck had a bit more than twice the gloveside run (11.5" to 5.6") and 3.1" more of downward movement (15.8" to 12.7", relative to the average FB). Overall, 40% more movement. Strider had a bit more velo, 85.7 to 84.0 (but Houck has more velo relative to his FB, and that may be the more important factor)..

Further comparison is tougher, given that they used very different pitch-use strategies, and pitch usage of course affects results; for instance, it's well established that the more you throw a pitch, the less effective it becomes (the recent continued increase in SO is a function of everyone throwing their FB less often).

Strider threw his slider 27% of the time vs. LHB and 41% vs. RHB; in contrast, Houck threw his slider … 28% vs. LHD and 42% vs. RHB.

But what’s surrounding this coincidence (?) is very different, especially vs. LHB (57% for Strider, 51% for Houck). Strider went 62-27-19, 4Seam / Slider / Change, while Houck was 29-28-18-16-9, Cutter/ Slider / Splitter / 4Seam / Sinker. Lefties facing Strider have to look out for the FB, and in fact they did well in innings 1-3, .346 xwOBA, .347 wOBA. I think that with Houck, more hitters are guessing slider, and that’s going to inflate his xwOBA at least a bit.


I won't dispute the claim that Strider's slider is baseball's best pitch in context, but I think there’s a good argument that Houck’s slider is better than Strider’s in a vacuum. That 40% extra movement – which puts him with the best-breaking slides on the planet – stands out in a way that Strider can’t match. Just imagine what slider results Houck could get if he had a 97 mph FB.

So, pitchers who go more frequently to their strongest pitch later in the game are more effective?

Pitchers like Houck who go to their strongest pitch less frequently later in the game are less effective?

If those are true, then the most obvious answer is that guys like Houck should not be going to their less effective pitches later in the game. Because the less effective pitches just get hit more. (Or do they? Statcast can tell us.)  

(But in Houck's specific case we know that whatever they're actually doing isn't working at the game level.  And he's the one I'm most interested in, obviously. )

But why does that third-time through degradation happen?  I think we can learn more by asking How exactly does it happen?

If it's "stamina" there would be an effect we can look for on the individual pitcher level.  We'd probably be more comfortable saying stamina issues affected the third-time-through pitching if:

a) The "best pitch" degraded over time, making it hittable the third time through the order. We'd look for less velocity. Less break. Less ability to locate those otherwise 'good' pitches - essentially teeing them up for hitters. (Statcast can tell us most of that, location being the most fiddly.)

b) Tiredness is actually affecting pitch selection, meaning that the best pitches remained the same in their quality. . .but maybe fewer of them could be thrown in an AB due to fatigue. That's probably harder to distinguish from a philosophy of changing the pitch-mix the third time through the order. And that's really what we're interested in, in terms of assigning this to something purely physical instead of something that's tactical.  I'd guess you'd probably look for back-to-back pitch patterns here - can the pitcher throw two or three "inning one" quality FBs (or whatever) in a row - or do they never do that? Even so, anything would most likely be an inference at best. But suggestive isn't valueless.