Rox Talk - Pitching and Decsions

An interesting comment was made yesterday on either ESPN or MLB Homeplate and that was that the Japanese specifically targeted the US defense in yesterday's win in the World Baseball Classic by specifically hitting towards Adam Dunn in right field. I've watched Ichiro hit and I think he can put the ball where he wants it and I've seen plenty of softball players do it but can a MLB caliber player do the same? The chart below shows the hits (blue dots) and outs (red dots). Looking at the chart, the Japanese certainly did hit to right field a lot. Whether it is statistically significant is probably debatable especially if you note the next chart which shows the US hits (blue dots) and outs (red dots). It would seem right field allowed for a lot more hits in general. Not for sure how Dodger Stadium plays, whether the hitters were left or right hand batters, and what the pitchers pitch and handedness for each situation indicated but I guess it makes for good commentary (or an excuse for the US team...)

Japan's Ball's in Play

USA Ball's in Play

Rox Starting and Relief Pitching Trends

Saw this nifty article and thought it would be interesting to run the Rox stats. The graph below shows the percent decisions by the starters and relief pitchers over the Rox's history. I also threw in the winning percentage to determine if there was any rhyme or reason to pitching at altitude. Generally it seems the Rox starter's are gradually getting more decisions. My guess is this is as much to do with getting deeper into games. In the last two winning seasons it did seem to indicate that having a decent bullpen helps. On average then we can expect that 69% of the decisions will go to the starters and 31% to the bullpen. As a side note 67% of the wins go the starters and 33% go to the bullpen...

Final graph is same basic figure as above but has the decisions per innings pitched. This graph would seem to indicate that if your bullpen gets more decisions your ballclub tends to do better or you win a lot of late inning games. I think for the Rox fans this kind of makes sense. If our starters could just keep us close we tend to win late (at least at home)?