James: Groundball pitchers and injuries

[Parker Hageman]

Over at BaseballNation.com, Rob Neyer directed our attention to a recent piece constructed by Bill James, at his side project, BillJamesOnline.com (subscription re'q).

 

In the piece, James takes aim at the notion that ground ball pitchers are more valuable than other types of pitchers, to which James says simply isn't true:

 

The vast majority of good pitchers are not ground ball pitchers, and the vast majority of ground ball pitchers are not good pitchers.

 

He rattles off a list of the game's best pitchers, all of which happened to be more fly ball oriented. James then went on to list the number of ground ball pitchers who had two or three years of success but wound up injured (like Chien-Ming Wang or Brandon Webb):

 

What I have never understood about ground ball pitchers, and do not understand now, is why they always get hurt. Show me an extreme ground ball pitcher, a guy with a terrific ground ball rate, and I’ll show you a guy who is going to be good for two years and then get hurt.

 

Neyer raises some very valid points regarding James's statements made without a complete study done on injuries (which I bet will be done soon!), but, overall, it raises some questions about the Minnesota Twins and their recent penchant for ground-ballers.

 

In the past decade, the Twins have had several of sinkerball pitchers have two or three goods years but either out of the major leagues because of injury or ineffectiveness (possibly due to injury). Joe Mays and Carlos Silva come to mind. Currently, the Twins also have brought in more of these types this off-season (including Mike Pelfrey and Vance Worley) and have others in-house who are coming off of surgery (like Kyle Gibson and Nick Blackburn).

 

Clearly, a study needs to be conducted to see if James's statements hold water, but if true, then the Twins strategy of grabbing ground-balling types is very misguided.

[ashbury]

Definitely an interesting correlation if it proves sound.

[ThePuck]

Definitely an interesting correlation if it proves sound.

 

Well, I think even if James can't prove the correlation to everyone's standards as 100% sound, the first part where he says most of the best pitchers aren't groundball pitchers is true.

[Badsmerf]

Would make sense considering the Twins idiocy in drafting pitchers and their current incompetence in the organization at the position. Brilliant. Not saying I blame them since GB pitchers were the go-to to combat juicing.

[Parker Hageman]

Would make sense considering the Twins idiocy in drafting pitchers and their current incompetence in the organization at the position.

 

I will say this: There seems to be an effort to change from that previous mentality. Trevor May & Alex Meyer represent a significant deviation from that. The last draft showed more power arms than finesse-types. It's hard to just bring in power arms, particularly through the free agent market, but it appears the organization is making in-roads towards that.

[ThePuck]

I will say this: There seems to be an effort to change from that previous mentality. Trevor May & Alex Meyer represent a significant deviation from that. The last draft showed more power arms than finesse-types. It's hard to just bring in power arms, particularly through the free agent market, but it appears the organization is making in-roads towards that.

 

Yeah, I remember when Ryan pointed that out...he had a look on his face like he had just taken a bite of the sourest lemon ever. He said something like 'you guys are always saying we don't go after strikeout guys and I think our draft shows we've done that.'

[Parker Hageman]

[CDog]

he had a look on his face like he had just taken a bite of the sourest lemon ever.

 

Are there times he doesn't look like that?

 

The notion that GB pitchers are more injury-prone is interesting because I feel like I've heard the opposite fairly frequently. Without using a single piece of data, to me it seems like pitchers, regardless of style, get hurt so often that it would be surprising to me if any particular "type" gets hurt more often than another. Which is why I think it's interesting, because I have no real good idea what the outcome would be. Varying degrees of injuries and poorly defined groupings for "type" would be things that jump to mind as obstacles to doing a really good objective study, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be interesting for someone to try.

[Boom Boom]

If true this is very interesting. Is it possible that the sinker is a risky pitch to throw? Or is it that sinkerball pitchers usually favor a slider over a curveball? You don't hear of many sinker/curve pitchers but you hear of plenty of sinker/slider types.

[ashbury]

(chaiman Terry...)

 

Wow, Parker, just wow. Is that an old one?

[Parker Hageman]

Wow, Parker, just wow. Is that an old one?

 

I don't know when it was created but Dan Szymborski (the guy who generates the ZiPs projection system) shared it earlier this week on Twitter. ThePuck's comments just made me think about that.

[nicksaviking]

Ha, is it wrong that Ryan looks strikingly like Eisenhower on that flag? My mind is blown.

[LaBombo]

Ha, is it wrong that Ryan looks strikingly like Eisenhower on that flag? My mind is blown.

 

+ 1, although Ryan looks a little more...intense in that pic than I picture Ike. Like he's watching Gibson in ST.

[Willihammer]

No, Donny. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!

[old nurse]

Baseball Prospectus | Baseball Therapy: What Really Predicts Pitcher Injuries? sheds a little light.

Verducci said that under 25 and increasing workload more than 30 innings from the previous year also leads to injuries.

[cmathewson]

I just think the sinker puts a lot of pressure on the elbow. Blackburn's elbow has had some pain or soreness since 2009. Also, when they are hurt, they tend to overthrow and the ball comes in straight.

[John Bonnes]

I guess I'd be interested in seeing the data. In some ways, it depends on what categories you're braking pitchers into. Are the pitcher that James looked at strikeout pitchers? Because if they are, then yeah, they are probably more effective. Or could it be that pitchers who make it to the majors, but can't strike people out tend to induce more groundballs? That might make sense.

 

I'll say this: I did a correlation study a few years ago to ERA, and if I remember right, GB/FB had a very low correlation to ERA. In fact, it was 0. It surprised me.

[Willihammer]

I think the doctors have generally believed that the UCL is stressed more during supination, not pronation, correct?

 

After all the TJs to sinkerballers recently, the medical community might want to take a closer look I guess. It doesn't seem like anyone is safe anymore.

[Badsmerf]

I will say this: There seems to be an effort to change from that previous mentality. Trevor May & Alex Meyer represent a significant deviation from that. The last draft showed more power arms than finesse-types. It's hard to just bring in power arms, particularly through the free agent market, but it appears the organization is making in-roads towards that.

 

I should have specified circa pre-2011 lol. I might have been unintentionally over zealous in that post... happens.

[edavis0308]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]3560[/ATTACH]

 

This is all sorts of awesome, but what does it say - "Pitcher Strikeouts are ???????"

[ashbury]

This is all sorts of awesome, but what does it say - "Pitcher Strikeouts are ???????"

 

Decadent. If it's meant as a takeoff on Bull Durham's line that strikeouts are both boring and fascist, it kind of misses the mark. But maybe Lenin or someone like him had some similar quote about decadence that makes it more apt than I know. Even without fully getting the joke, I love this piece of art.

[DSzymborski]

I put the post together earlier this week. It wasn't meant as a dig at Terry Ryan, but as I tend to do at 3 AM, I have bizarre musings on Twitter and it developed into a fun conversation. Essentially, I suggested that it would be very entertaining if one year, a team taht knew they were going to be pretty lousy, did a whole tongue-in-cheek dictatorship theme year, in which they do stuff like simply declaring wins and announcing that people should ignore MLB's official propaganda. Some of the other baseball writers still up chimed in and we had all sorts of cool ideas what a team could do in this vein, like introducing players with fictional achievements and announce that they plan to annex the Tigers and liberate Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander from the imperialists.

 

So I made a little poster to commemorate the occasion. The pitcher strikeouts are decadent references Bull Durham, but it also is a reference to the communist theory of decadence, which was very popular early on. Essentially, the belief was that capitalist countries had taken capitalism as far as it could go and were descending into a mire of moral decay and self-indulgence. Since the Twins haven't been the biggest pitching strikeout team, I imagined a bizarro dictator version of Terry Ryan, fuming about the obsession that other teams have nowadays with K rate thanks to FIP and the like and wanting to bring pitch to contact back to the proletariat.

[ashbury]

Essentially, I suggested that it would be very entertaining if one year, a team taht knew they were going to be pretty lousy, did a whole tongue-in-cheek dictatorship theme year, in which they do stuff like simply declaring wins and announcing that people should ignore MLB's official propaganda.

 

Sounds Veeckian. MLB is a little too buttoned-down for that even if a Veeck were on the scene. But maybe he'll take the idea and run with it for his Saints.

 

Welcome, Dan.