Call me a sucker (no homo), but I have a soft spot in my heart (no homo) for unlikely success stories in sports. One of the more recent cases has been that of Brian Bannister, pitcher for the Kansas City Royals. Normally I’d probably be one of a select few who would have any reason to follow him, sole reason being he was a former Mets minor league prospect. However, after his first 3 starts into the 2008 season this it’s hard for the common person to ignore him any longer. Brian Bannister the pitcher, is a man who continues to win with his intelligent cerebral approach to pitching, despite his largely average “stuff”. He works off a fringe average 86-88 mph straight 4 seam fastball, a nothing special 84-86 mph cut fastball, a sharp 12-6 curveball, and a “show-me” changeup to use against lefties due to its tailing away action against left handed batters.
Brian Bannister the man is far from average. He is the son of former major league pitcher Floyd Bannister, who was an overpowering lefty strike out pitcher. Bannister went to the University of Southern California and double majored in economics and mathematics, with no athletic scholarship of any kind. He walked onto the USC baseball team as an infielder, and made the team as a utility player. Seeing his playing career going nowhere as a result of very little playing time, he decided to go back to his high school position of pitcher. He went on to pitch along side highly touted prospects Mark Prior (started with the Cubs, and now on the Padres), and Anthony Reyes (of the STL Cardinals). He finished out his senior year at USC with average numbers 6-5 WL and 4.53 ERA. His mediocre numbers, paired with playing alongside two of the most highly touted pitchers in the game, left him with very little buzz going into the MLB Amateur draft. The New York Mets took a flier on him in the 7th round of the draft, and assigned him to their Single A affiliate the Brooklyn Cyclones. He performed way above at expectations at every minor league level until he was finally invited to spring training in the spring of 2006, where his performance allowed him to beat out Aaron Heilman for the 5th spot in the major league rotation to begin the year.
So what’s so interesting about this guy? The man is smart, and he gets it. In an age obsessed with radar guns and homeruns, he takes a cerebral and numbers based approach to pitching. He recently conducted an interview with Tim Dierkes of mlbtraderumors.com, and he really gives the reader a good look into his pitching philosophy, and approach.
MLBTR: What’s the most misunderstood aspect of succeeding in baseball by typical fans, sportswriters, and announcers?
Bannister: There are two things that make baseball unique from other sports. One, baseball is a game of skill that is accentuated by the physical tools of the person performing those skills. Most people superficially judge a position player solely on size, strength, and speed, when his eyesight, balance, rhythm, hand-eye coordination, and mental makeup are much more influential factors in his future success. It is when a player embodies all of these qualities that we get our superstars and hall-of-famers. I would much rather face a hitter with “80″ power and “80″ speed but bad strike zone discipline than one with no power and a .400+ OBP. Over the course of time, the hitter with the .400+ OBP is going to hurt me much, much more, especially if he is surrounded by other good hitters.
Secondly, whether you like it or not, baseball is a game of randomness. We play outdoors (mostly) in changing elements and field dimensions, and each pitch results in a series of events that can go in either teams favor. One thing that I have have come to accept is that just because I train hard physically, I practice perfectly, I prepare diligently, and execute a pitch exactly as I wanted, it can still result in a home run. In golf, if you analyze all the variables correctly (lie, distance, slope, wind, etc.) and execute your swing perfectly, it will result in a great shot. Not so for a pitcher or a hitter. A hitter can swing the bat perfectly and it will result in an out more than six times out of ten. Therefore, as a pitcher, I study and play to put the percentages in my favor more than anything because I know that I can’t control the outcome in a single game or series of games, but over the course of a season or a career I will be better than average.
In my last article I explained what how OBP works, and Bannister applies this stat to a real life situation. Essentially what hes saying is that he more nervous about facing a hitter will walk, bunt, slap hits, and whose aim is to get on base rather then swing for the fences each pitch. This furthers my argument that a team of sluggers will never win ball games. Bannister also realizes that there are many random elements to this game, be it different parks, weather conditions, and just straight bad luck. However his mentality in regards to randomness is more of a big picture approach, where during a single game, yes, you may be unlucky, but over the course of the season those things regress to a none issue.This idea coincides with a new reliance on the BABIP stats that has been used very often in current times, and it is a good tool to determine breakout and attrition rates(for anyone who reads baseball prospectus), however Bannister isn’t quite sold on this idea…see below:
MLBTR: Are you familiar with the Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) stat? It’s been suggested that the percentage of batted balls that drop in for hits may be largely out of a pitcher’s control. What are your thoughts on that?
Bannister: I think a lot of fans underestimate how much time I spend working with statistics to improve my performance on the field. For those that don’t know, the typical BABIP for starting pitchers in Major League Baseball is around .300 give or take a few points. The common (and valid) argument is that over the course of a pitcher’s career, he can not control his BABIP from year-to-year (because it is random), but over a period of time it will settle into the median range of roughly .300 (the peak of the bell curve). Therefore, pitchers that have a BABIP of under .300 are due to regress in subsequent years and pitchers with a BABIP above .300 should see some improvement (assuming they are a Major League Average pitcher).
Because I don’t have enough of a sample size yet (service time), I don’t claim to be able to beat the .300 average year in and year out at the Major League level. However, I also don’t feel that every pitcher is hopelessly bound to that .300 number for his career if he takes some steps to improve his odds – which is what pitching is all about.
One thing that I work a lot with, and that is not factored into common statistical analysis, is what counts a pitcher pitches in most often – regardless of what type of “stuff” he has. Most stats only measure results, not the situations in which those results occurred. In the common box score, an RBI is an RBI, but it doesn’t show the count, number of outs, and number of runners on base when it occurred. For me, the area where pitchers have the most opportunity to improve or be better than average is in their count leverage.
Let me give the fans and young pitchers out there one example of a way that I try to improve my performance, this time with regards to BABIP.
Question to myself: Does a hitter have the same BABIP in a 2-1 count that he does in an 0-2, 1-2, or 2-2 count? How does his batting average and OBP/SLG/OPS differ when he has two strikes on him vs zero or one strike?
These are the type of questions that I will come up with and employ in my starts to see if I can improve my outings. For example, here are my career numbers in the counts mentioned above:
2-1: .380 (19/50)
1-2: .196 (20/102)
2-2: .171 (18/105)
0-2: .057 (3/53)
It is obvious that hitters, even at the Major League level, do not perform as well when the count is in the pitcher’s favor, and vice-versa. This is because with two strikes, a hitter HAS to swing at a pitch in the strike zone or he is out, and he must also make a split-second decision on whether a borderline pitch is a strike or not, reducing his ability to put a good swing on the ball. What this does is take away a hitter’s choice. If I throw a curveball with two strikes, the hitter has to swing if the pitch is in the strike zone, whether he is good at hitting a curveball or not. He also does not have a choice on location. We are all familiar with Ted Williams’ famous strike zone averages at the Baseball Hall of Fame. It is well-known that a pitch knee-high on the outside corner will not have the same batting average or OBP/SLG/OPS as one waist-high right down the middle. Here is a comparison of the batting averages and slugging percentage on my fastball vs. my curveball:
Fastball: .246/.404
Curveball: .184/.265
The important thing to note is that, with two strikes, if I throw a curveball for a strike, the hitter has to swing at it (and I like those numbers). How does a pitcher use this to his advantage? By throwing strikes and keeping the advantage on his side as often as possible. It seems like such a simple solution, yet so much more emphasis is placed on “stuff” nowadays and this is often not reinforced. When a pitcher who has great “stuff” employs this line of thinking, his numbers will improve to an even greater degree.
So, to finally answer the question about BABIP, if we look at the numbers above, how can a Major League pitcher try and beat the .300 BABIP average? By pitching in 0-2, 1-2, & 2-2 counts more often than the historical averages of pitchers in the Major Leagues. Until a pitcher reaches two strikes, he has no historical statistical advantage over the hitter. In fact, my batting averages against in 0-1, 1-0, & 1-1 counts are .297/.295/.311 respectively, very close to the roughly .300 average.
My explanation for why I have beat the average so far is that in my career I have been able to get a Major League hitter to put the ball in play in a 1-2 or 0-2 count 155 times, and in a 2-0 or 2-1 count 78 times. That’s twice as often in my favor, & I’ll take those odds.
This quote explains the idea of BABIP better than I ever could. His aim as a pitcher is to beat this stat, and his philosophy in doing so is a very simple one that gets overlooked often….Getting ahead of the hitter….You can beat this stat if you’re always ahead in the count and force the hitter to hit your pitch (and in the case of Bannister it could be one of 4 or 5 different pitches). If you’re behind in the count the advantage goes to the hitter just about every time because they can look for their pitch. The idea is for the pitcher to dictate the “at bat” not the batter. He backs his idea up with statistical research on his own stats, so that you can see this philosophy with heard evidence.
Bannister is really of a new breed of pitchers. As opposed to scouts obsessed with “stuff”, he has found out a way to win ballgames by being a student of the game, and a student of numbers. As long as new statistical metrics are uncovered, pitchers of his ilk will continue improving, and maybe get a second look by teams even though they don’t throw a 99 mph fastball.
