Petti: How the league adjusts to hitters over time
From SABR member Bill Petti at FanGraphs on May 22, 2012:
Mets first baseman Ike Davis has seen the number of fastballs thrown to him drop significantly since his rookie season in 2010. In that year, 57% of the pitches thrown to Davis were some type of fastball. So far in 2012? Only 51%. There have been only 30 seasons between 2007 and 2011 where a hitter with more than 100 plate appearances saw a lower percentage of fastballs in a season than Ike this year — and only five where a player accumulated more than 500 plate appearances.
Clearly pitchers are adjusting to Davis, altering their approach based upon Davis’ perceived offensive strengths and weaknesses. This got me thinking about the extent to which major league pitchers adjust to hitters from year to year. Was this change significant, or more common based on the normal adjustments hitters can expect to see from year to year.
As a first cut, I decided to look at changes in the pitch types that batters faced in consecutive years. Throwing hitters a different mix of pitches (i.e. fastballs, curveballs, sliders, etc.) is just one way the league can adjust. Pitchers can alter location, sequence and speed. However, the data was more readily available for pitch types, so the choice was made to focus there first. I decided to use the pitch-type distributions that are based off of PITCHf/x data. This allowed me to collect data on hitters with 100 at least plate appearances each year from 2007 through 2011.
Read the full article here: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/how-the-league-adjusts-to-hitters-over-time/
Originally published: May 22, 2012. Last Updated: May 22, 2012.