Zito to Giants

[crockpot]

[ QUOTE ]
The Zito deal is not a good deal, but it is not puke. 7 years is much, but the feilding independent stat guys need to realize there is more to pitching than K, BB and HR, especially for big FB/pop up guys like Zito.

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projecting zito's IF/fly rate at a reasonable 15% against a league average of about 10.5%, we're basically talking about one extra pop-up every 18 innings. go ahead and add .5 K/9 to his strikeout rate as a balancing factor; it doesn't make him a great pitcher. this also ignores how IF/fly has a significantly lower year-to-year correlation than K/9 or BB/9.

if you're really arguing that being a flyball pitcher is a good thing, then i can't help you with that.

[TheGrasshopper]

I'm happy he isn't a Met.The deal is too long but like I said I'm happy where he didn't go.

Go Phillies.

[DesertCat]

Randy Johnson has been falling apart, and the Yankees want to dump him for spare parts. His WHIP has been 0.90, 1.13, 1.24 over the last three years. He plays in front of a horrible defense.

Barry Zito just signed a $136M, seven year deal. His WHIP for the last three years has been 1.39, 1.20, 1.40. He plays in front of a very good defense.

What am I missing here?

[THAY3R]

[ QUOTE ]
Randy Johnson has been falling apart, and the Yankees want to dump him for spare parts. His WHIP has been 0.90, 1.13, 1.24 over the last three years. He plays in front of a horrible defense.

Barry Zito just signed a $136M, seven year deal. His WHIP for the last three years has been 1.39, 1.20, 1.40. He plays in front of a very good defense.

What am I missing here?

[/ QUOTE ]

Randy Johnsons strikes alot more people out.

Duh.

[J.R.]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The Zito deal is not a good deal, but it is not puke. 7 years is much, but the feilding independent stat guys need to realize there is more to pitching than K, BB and HR, especially for big FB/pop up guys like Zito.

[/ QUOTE ]

projecting zito's IF/fly rate at a reasonable 15% against a league average of about 10.5%, we're basically talking about one extra pop-up every 18 innings. go ahead and add .5 K/9 to his strikeout rate as a balancing factor; it doesn't make him a great pitcher. this also ignores how IF/fly has a significantly lower year-to-year correlation than K/9 or BB/9.

if you're really arguing that being a flyball pitcher is a good thing, then i can't help you with that.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree Zito is not great.

Zito's career fb% is 43, but 7% of them are IFFB. link His actual outfield fly ball ratio is 36%. In other words, he doesn;t give up as many big flys as you might otherwise think, and its partly why his HR/FB are better than his park alone would have you think. Not great, but better than at first glance. IFFBs are obviously much better for a pitcher than any other type of batted ball:
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Batted Ball Run Impact
IF Flyballs -0.25
Groundballs -0.06
OF Flyballs 0.06
Line Drives 0.36
</pre><hr />
link


Other stuff: For a pitcher SF is much better for HR a little better for 2b and much, much worse for triples. Given HRs occur like 9 times as often as 3Bs and are worse for a pitcher, it looks like SF is a better park for a flyball pitchers. 2004-2006 park factor data from Bill James handbook OAK 106 2B, 86 3B and 95 HR. AT&amp;T is 104 2b, 127 3b, 84 HR.

Foul out data from 2003-2004 Oakland had 100 extra foul outs over 2003 and 2004 than SF, or 50 per year. Assuming these numbers are consistent, that is 25 per team over 81 games, or once every 3 1/4 games for Oakland pitchers, maybe more if they have an IFFB/FB staff.

SF had a much better defense, both on groundballs and balls hit in the air, than Oakland in 2006. link. Adding Dave Roberts over Steve Finley and having Winn play in RF over Alou should improve the Giants defensive outfield.

[J.R.]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The Zito deal is not a good deal, but it is not puke. 7 years is much, but the feilding independent stat guys need to realize there is more to pitching than K, BB and HR, especially for big FB/pop up guys like Zito.

[/ QUOTE ]

projecting zito's IF/fly rate at a reasonable 15% against a league average of about 10.5%, we're basically talking about one extra pop-up every 18 innings. go ahead and add .5 K/9 to his strikeout rate as a balancing factor; it doesn't make him a great pitcher. this also ignores how IF/fly has a significantly lower year-to-year correlation than K/9 or BB/9.

if you're really arguing that being a flyball pitcher is a good thing, then i can't help you with that.

[/ QUOTE ]

A much better explanation of the point I'm trying to make can be found in a set of three articles by Ken Arneson that are discussed on Tango's blog here:

Why Dips doesn't work for Zito

One of Arnesons' conclusions:

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In fact, I’d guess that Zito has such a low BABIP because he makes batters hit easy-to-catch fly balls. He keeps his BABIP low by inducing batters to hit weak fly balls. Zito is consistently among the MLB leaders in popup percentage.

[/ QUOTE ]

Tango found this:


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Which was further supported by Adam Morris as he looks at popup percentages by handedness of batter. Fascinating stuff. It then led me to Baseball Reference and I looked for Zito’s BABIP against LH and RH. Here it is:
RH: .260
LH: .292

A 32-point split. Is that alot? Sean hasn’t (yet?) implemented splits on a team or league level. So, we move on to Retrosheet, where the data is there, and we just have to figure the BABIP ourselves. Left handed pitchers had a BABIP of this against batters:
RH: .302
LH: .294

That’s right, while Zito’s career BABIP against LH is virtually exactly league average, he has a BABIP of 42 points less against RH! Zito has 3200 BIP against RH, meaning one standard deviation would be 8 points. His performance is FIVE standard deviations from the mean. That is about as significant as significant gets.
....
Anyway, the key here is that DIPS, in its pure form, should not be held so closely. There are alot of groups of data that shows that there is a definite difference, and platoon is yet another.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's some good comments by Joe Arthur about more research needing to be done and whether the conclusions are overstated, but the idea that Zito has some skills that allow him to outperform what DIPS or FIP might expect him to do seems true.

Of course Zito's increasing BB rate and declining K rate aren't that exciting, but there seems to be a lot more going on beyond this with Zito than for the typical pitcher.