Pirates create their own advantages

[jebrick]

Interesting article on the Pirates use of pitching inside and defensive shifts

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/ ... o-beat-you

Do you remember what “Moneyball” was about? What it was really about, not the part where the movie caricatured the entire profession of scouting into a collection of geriatric dimwits or the obvious “walks are good.” No, I mean the core concept: Using the means at your disposal, creating advantages you use to beat everybody else. And once again, the Pittsburgh Pirates are doing just that, creating their own advantages.

Guess who leads the major leagues in pitches thrown inside? The Pirates are the only team in the majors throwing more than a third of their pitches on the inside third of the plate, 34.6 percent of all pitches thrown

The Pirates are once again leading the league in defensive shifts used, shifting in 1,935 plate appearances this season, or a little more than 41 percent of the time. And that’s paying off that much more because, with all of those pitches they’re throwing low (and inside), the Pirates generate more ground balls than any other team (an MLB-leading ratio of 1.10 grounders to flies) and more ground-ball outs (1.61 ground-ball outs for every caught fly). And that’s feeding that MLB-leading total of double plays (124) despite their being nowhere close to the MLB lead in baserunners allowed, but that’s thanks to their MLB-best rate of double play opportunities converted (14 percent).

[Legacy User]

wow..thats interesting..never knew!

[jeemie]

This was the metric that interested me, and probably in part goes towards explaining why the Pirates are so good at comeback wins.

If you can kill fastballs, when do you think that might come most in handy, given the state of pitching today? Going up against relievers, because if there’s one thing people love to use with the game on the line, it’s late-game velocity. Unsurprisingly, as a team the Pirates are better than average in “Late & Close” situations as defined by Baseball-Reference.com, with a .692 OPS. And where the National League OPS versus relievers is 40 points lower than against starting pitchers (.684 vs. 724), the Pirates are actually better against the guys coming out of the bullpen (.726 OPS, vs. .713 against starters).

I know for the past two years, I have been hugely in favor of working over starting pitchers where we can to quickly get into opposing teams' bullpens, because we have such a huge advantage there.

The Pirates really have embraced analytics as much as or more than any team in baseball, and this is one area where Clint Hurdle should be praised out the wazoo because he's actually one of the leading proponents of it in the Pirates' organization.