3rd Time Through the Order - Does It Matter? - Page 2

5-4-3 · 04-06-2018, 01:52 PM

Hard data doesn’t care about your personal preferences.

The three times through the order penalty is real. People ignore it at their peril.

Clovidequano Dovatha · 04-07-2018, 11:11 AM

In my view, pitch counts shouldn't really matter much, and I really don't agree with the idea that people should be concerned when a pitcher starts to face batters for the third time in games, if they're starters. I am not convinced that it's a bad thing when starters pitch more often or for longer in games. If anything, I think it's more likely better for pitchers when they get more work in a game, in many cases, whether relievers or starters, on average.

Not a fan of near-constant pitching changes, or burning pitchers for just a few batters or an inning at most, on average. For one thing, saves are cheaper to get than they were before, by a considerable degree, I think, even 15 to 20 years ago, IIRC. You hardly see pitchers like Sutter, for instance, anymore. I think it quite likely that if he were playing when Rivera and Hoffman did, he'd have had at least 400, if not 500, saves by the end of his career, but he played in the 1970's and 1980's, while Rivera started in the 1990's and played into the 2010's. I don't have the statistics for those three players, at least, in front of me now, but I suspect that people like Sutter and Lyle and Fingers and Gossage and Eckersley, for example, would do much better on average as relievers/closers, than Rivera, Hoffman, and many of the current RP's/closers out there now, if they all played in the same era of baseball history. I admit that Sutter is my favorite player of all time, but he had very good numbers, at least for the most part, I think, before his arm injury or injuries did his career in like it or they did. I think he could have gone at least into the 1990's, if it or they hadn't done so.

Of course, baseball changes frequently, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. I do like seeing more teams, to a degree, but the way that the major leagues are now configured is, in my view, totally nonsensical, in terms of having 15 teams per league and three divisions per league. Selig and others totally screwed up baseball when they initiated the three-division setup for both leagues, started the wild-card nonsense, and switched the leagues that the Brewers and Astros each play in, for starters, not to mention regular-season inter-league play outside of the All-Star Game. I'll grant that without such nonsense, the Cardinals most likely would not have at least a few postseason appearances and at least one World Series Championship, but I am so not a fan of many changes that have been made to baseball since roughly 1992, more or less.

I strongly dislike the DH, and it should be abolished. Granted, several players have played longer because of it, including people like Pujols, for instance, but I still favor well-pitched games and the strategies often present in things like double-switches, more often than not. Also, the idea of pitch clocks and the Buster Posey rule, among other recent changes, don't sit very well with me either, generally speaking.

Well, I suppose that is enough for me to talk about here right now, folks. CD out.

drhay53 · 04-07-2018, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clovidequano Dovatha

In my view, pitch counts shouldn't really matter much, and I really don't agree with the idea that people should be concerned when a pitcher starts to face batters for the third time in games, if they're starters. I am not convinced that it's a bad thing when starters pitch more often or for longer in games. If anything, I think it's more likely better for pitchers when they get more work in a game, in many cases, whether relievers or starters, on average.

Respectfully, there is abundant and very strong statistical evidence showing that offensive performance increases significantly between the first and third times through the order. Some people say it's pitch count, some say it's batters seeing their stuff a few times, but regardless of the why, the effect itself is pretty incontrovertible.

5-4-3 · 04-07-2018, 11:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clovidequano Dovatha

In my view, pitch counts shouldn't really matter much

Hard data doesn’t care about your “view.” Everybody gets to have their own opinion, but nobody gets to have their own facts.

“It is well known that pitchers are less effective the third time through the order...The numbers speak for themselves. As the lineup turns over, a typical starting pitcher’s OPS-against climbs from .705 to .731 to .771.” - FanGraphs

You don’t have to like the third time through the order penalty, but it’s very real.

NoOne · 04-08-2018, 02:05 AM

some people aren't convinced the world is round, but it is.

or believe in evolution for that matter. it doesn't matter if you don't want to be closely relate to a chimp (99.9% of our dna? somethin akin to that) ... it's just true.

and yes, some people can be entertained by running head long into a garage door, but nontheless it's not advisable.

i'm pretty sure most people don't enjoy losing more than they should.. this is just one easy and rational way they can win more, if you choose to do it. faith is not required.

hluraven · 04-08-2018, 04:26 AM

Yes, there is a decreasing effectiveness the second, third, fourth time through the order. That doesn't automatically assume "more wins" if you blindly pull the starter after 2 times through. If it was as simple as "worse OPS the third time, therefore pull after two" then you would actually pull the starter after the first time through the order, as that has better OPS than the second.

Taking one statistic in a vacuum and making all your assumptions from that is dangerous. Sadly, that's what many in this thread are doing. If you pull your starters after their second time through the order for an entire season, does that equate to more wins? Possibly, possibly not. It depends on far more than just "starter will do worse the third time round". Are the relievers as good as the starters? What will 4-5 innings per night (on average) do to a bullpen over a longer time span than one night? Are there injury risks associated with this? How many games will be lost when you end up with no rested relievers?

It may well be that it is the right strategy to pull starters after 4 or 5 innings every night, it could also be that you should pull them after just one time through the lineup as the second time is worse than the third. Or, it could be, on balance it's better to stick with some starters longer. The single statistic that third time through the order is worse for a starter than the second is not disputed. That this means you should always pull your starter is simply not as certain, given there are a huge number of other factors involved. If there wasn't, you would pull the starter after the first time round.

Syd Thrift · 04-08-2018, 09:57 AM

You don't see pitchers like Bruce Sutter anymore? Are you talking about the guy who had arm problems and was washed up by the item he was 32? I mean, there are much better examples of relief pitchers from the 70s and 80s who threw a lot of innings but didn't blow out their arms...

Anyway the reason you don't see stoppers like that so much anymore is that teams now try really hard to gain the platoon advantage in relief now and so rather than put one guy out there in the 7th they put 3. How do you get teams to not do that? The whole 7 man bullpen thing is basically there because the A's built a pitching staff around it (and yet another sore armed relief pitcher in Dennis Eckersley). If a team gives a pitcher 65 games and 90 innings and is effective because that guy is just so freaking good, teams will move to that standard instead because that's how baseball works.

Clovidequano Dovatha · 04-08-2018, 10:22 AM

I've never been a fan of La Russa, to be quite honest. And not just with the matter of Ozzie Smith, at least. Granted, he was a good manager, and won a Series with us, I admit. But still, I didn't really like him much, and would have rather seen someone else manage the Cardinals, I think, instead of him.

Yes, Sutter had his arm problems, but he was still quite good, even though he ultimately ended up with a losing statistical record in his career, probably at least due to his arm issues, if not entirely because of them. Also, if I remember correctly, some of his teams ended up losing more games than they won, so that probably affected his statistics to some degree as well. Although I'd have to check that to be sure, of course.

True, there may be many more players who may be better examples than Sutter here, but I freely admit to not following many other teams quite as closely as I've followed the Cardinals in my life. I've been following the Cardinals since 1982, at least, if not even before that. Along with the other Cardinals team, the 76'ers, and the Blues since somewhere around that time, as well, for reasons I may perhaps mention later, if I so choose to tell you all why at some point.

I'm currently up here in Twins territory, somewhere, when I'd rather hear more about the Cardinals, for example, than I normally do. For the most part, while I've lived up here, the Twins have generally stunk, I believe. And I still have negative feelings about the 1987 World Series up here, as well, for at least one reason, if not more than one, which I may have mentioned before in at least one other post on the forums, folks.

I was in the process of typing something else, but I accidentally hit back or something, and lost what I was trying to say, and perhaps also lost my train of current thought here. If I somehow remember what I was trying to say, I'll hopefully be able to write it down in another reply later, of course, folks.

I have many more thoughts about baseball, for sure. So you may certainly read more about them later on, I think, as time passes. I've seen some good players, as I'm sure we all have, but I certainly haven't been able to attend more than just one MLB game in my whole life to this point in time. For me, that only time to date, if I'll ever be able to attend another one in my life, was the Cards-Mets game on Father's Day 1984 in Busch Stadium II. That's a potential story for another day, though, I think, at least in part, if not entirely, everyone.

Well, that's enough for now, at least, I think. CD out.

5-4-3 · 04-08-2018, 10:35 AM

For those who don’t believe in the penalty -

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/n...order-penalty/

NoOne · 04-09-2018, 03:01 PM

fake news.. i don't like it.. fake news <buries head in sand>

for the Cardinals fan -- bookmark your st. loius newspaper sports page. guarantee it's online and free. you can find your games streaming online.. may need a vpn to bypass any blackouts etc.. (despite popular belief, vpn's don't protect anything but your location - no matter what you have an ip address and it can be hacked - whether here or there doesn't matter at all. you should not do your online banking, or the like, while connected to a vpn -- nothing with credit card information or personal info etc.)

if you read espn's feeds for your team, you'll notice almost all of the stories come from the wire (ap) -- it'll be nearly word for word or at least the same in regard to information communicated. at the local level the rest is just cyclical garbage they regurgitate every year and i guess no one remembers? at least in detroit that's how it works. pander to the lowest common denominator

i can't read the free press or the news anymore. i stick to the minor league report the freep does and a few other articles here and there that aren't garbage. whether i read it with an espn or local flare doens't matter much anymore. it's all coming from the same source. (not a good thing outside of sports.. no big deal in sports)

5-4-3 · 04-09-2018, 03:27 PM

I like the baseball news I get from MLB Trade Rumors.

Clovidequano Dovatha · 04-10-2018, 10:36 PM

Grandma used to send me things periodically from the St. Louis area, including numerous clippings from the P-D, I believe, for many years when I was much younger than I am now. But eventually, of course, such mailing stopped, some time before her death nearly 15 years ago. She even made me at least one or two Cardinals-themed quilts, if I remember correctly. Where they might be, if they still exist now, I'm not really sure. But we didn't generally get to see much of each other in our lives after me and my family moved into Twins' territory, for obvious reasons. Oh, sure, she might periodically come to visit us at times, when possible. But we weren't generally able to come down to Missouri to visit her, for various reasons I can't share here, unfortunately.

About the last time we were able to communicate with or see each other easily enough on a regular enough basis was just a few years before her eventual death in her 80's, if I remember correctly. I definitely do remember her sending me various things from the St. Louis area at least through the end of the 1998 season, if not up to sometime around the time Pujols debuted in the Majors, in any case, at least. She's been gone for a long time, but she is no less loved, even now, of course.

I don't know what she would have thought of all this sabermetric stuff, but I do believe she at least liked, if not loved, seeing baseball, for reasons I may not know for sure, or at least not entirely. And I certainly don't know what my paternal grandfather would have thought about it, seeing as he died nearly 70 years ago this year, if memory serves me correctly, when my own dad was still young himself.

Well, that's enough commentary about St. Louis and baseball, at least, I think, for this post here, folks. So I'll close this post, and wish you all a good night, or whatever, as circumstances might then permit for each of you, of course, then. CD out.

04-06-2018, 01:52 PM	#21
5-4-3 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2017 Posts: 143	Hard data doesn’t care about your personal preferences. The three times through the order penalty is real. People ignore it at their peril.

04-07-2018, 11:11 AM	#22
Clovidequano Dovatha Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2018 Location: Somewhere in the United States of America on God's Earth Posts: 7,014	In my view, pitch counts shouldn't really matter much, and I really don't agree with the idea that people should be concerned when a pitcher starts to face batters for the third time in games, if they're starters. I am not convinced that it's a bad thing when starters pitch more often or for longer in games. If anything, I think it's more likely better for pitchers when they get more work in a game, in many cases, whether relievers or starters, on average. Not a fan of near-constant pitching changes, or burning pitchers for just a few batters or an inning at most, on average. For one thing, saves are cheaper to get than they were before, by a considerable degree, I think, even 15 to 20 years ago, IIRC. You hardly see pitchers like Sutter, for instance, anymore. I think it quite likely that if he were playing when Rivera and Hoffman did, he'd have had at least 400, if not 500, saves by the end of his career, but he played in the 1970's and 1980's, while Rivera started in the 1990's and played into the 2010's. I don't have the statistics for those three players, at least, in front of me now, but I suspect that people like Sutter and Lyle and Fingers and Gossage and Eckersley, for example, would do much better on average as relievers/closers, than Rivera, Hoffman, and many of the current RP's/closers out there now, if they all played in the same era of baseball history. I admit that Sutter is my favorite player of all time, but he had very good numbers, at least for the most part, I think, before his arm injury or injuries did his career in like it or they did. I think he could have gone at least into the 1990's, if it or they hadn't done so. Of course, baseball changes frequently, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. I do like seeing more teams, to a degree, but the way that the major leagues are now configured is, in my view, totally nonsensical, in terms of having 15 teams per league and three divisions per league. Selig and others totally screwed up baseball when they initiated the three-division setup for both leagues, started the wild-card nonsense, and switched the leagues that the Brewers and Astros each play in, for starters, not to mention regular-season inter-league play outside of the All-Star Game. I'll grant that without such nonsense, the Cardinals most likely would not have at least a few postseason appearances and at least one World Series Championship, but I am so not a fan of many changes that have been made to baseball since roughly 1992, more or less. I strongly dislike the DH, and it should be abolished. Granted, several players have played longer because of it, including people like Pujols, for instance, but I still favor well-pitched games and the strategies often present in things like double-switches, more often than not. Also, the idea of pitch clocks and the Buster Posey rule, among other recent changes, don't sit very well with me either, generally speaking. Well, I suppose that is enough for me to talk about here right now, folks. CD out.

04-08-2018, 02:05 AM	#25
NoOne Banned Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,273 Infractions: 1/2 (4)	some people aren't convinced the world is round, but it is. or believe in evolution for that matter. it doesn't matter if you don't want to be closely relate to a chimp (99.9% of our dna? somethin akin to that) ... it's just true. and yes, some people can be entertained by running head long into a garage door, but nontheless it's not advisable. i'm pretty sure most people don't enjoy losing more than they should.. this is just one easy and rational way they can win more, if you choose to do it. faith is not required.

04-08-2018, 04:26 AM	#26
hluraven Major Leagues Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: London, England Posts: 355	Yes, there is a decreasing effectiveness the second, third, fourth time through the order. That doesn't automatically assume "more wins" if you blindly pull the starter after 2 times through. If it was as simple as "worse OPS the third time, therefore pull after two" then you would actually pull the starter after the first time through the order, as that has better OPS than the second. Taking one statistic in a vacuum and making all your assumptions from that is dangerous. Sadly, that's what many in this thread are doing. If you pull your starters after their second time through the order for an entire season, does that equate to more wins? Possibly, possibly not. It depends on far more than just "starter will do worse the third time round". Are the relievers as good as the starters? What will 4-5 innings per night (on average) do to a bullpen over a longer time span than one night? Are there injury risks associated with this? How many games will be lost when you end up with no rested relievers? It may well be that it is the right strategy to pull starters after 4 or 5 innings every night, it could also be that you should pull them after just one time through the lineup as the second time is worse than the third. Or, it could be, on balance it's better to stick with some starters longer. The single statistic that third time through the order is worse for a starter than the second is not disputed. That this means you should always pull your starter is simply not as certain, given there are a huge number of other factors involved. If there wasn't, you would pull the starter after the first time round.

04-08-2018, 10:22 AM	#28
Clovidequano Dovatha Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2018 Location: Somewhere in the United States of America on God's Earth Posts: 7,014	I've never been a fan of La Russa, to be quite honest. And not just with the matter of Ozzie Smith, at least. Granted, he was a good manager, and won a Series with us, I admit. But still, I didn't really like him much, and would have rather seen someone else manage the Cardinals, I think, instead of him. Yes, Sutter had his arm problems, but he was still quite good, even though he ultimately ended up with a losing statistical record in his career, probably at least due to his arm issues, if not entirely because of them. Also, if I remember correctly, some of his teams ended up losing more games than they won, so that probably affected his statistics to some degree as well. Although I'd have to check that to be sure, of course. True, there may be many more players who may be better examples than Sutter here, but I freely admit to not following many other teams quite as closely as I've followed the Cardinals in my life. I've been following the Cardinals since 1982, at least, if not even before that. Along with the other Cardinals team, the 76'ers, and the Blues since somewhere around that time, as well, for reasons I may perhaps mention later, if I so choose to tell you all why at some point. I'm currently up here in Twins territory, somewhere, when I'd rather hear more about the Cardinals, for example, than I normally do. For the most part, while I've lived up here, the Twins have generally stunk, I believe. And I still have negative feelings about the 1987 World Series up here, as well, for at least one reason, if not more than one, which I may have mentioned before in at least one other post on the forums, folks. I was in the process of typing something else, but I accidentally hit back or something, and lost what I was trying to say, and perhaps also lost my train of current thought here. If I somehow remember what I was trying to say, I'll hopefully be able to write it down in another reply later, of course, folks. I have many more thoughts about baseball, for sure. So you may certainly read more about them later on, I think, as time passes. I've seen some good players, as I'm sure we all have, but I certainly haven't been able to attend more than just one MLB game in my whole life to this point in time. For me, that only time to date, if I'll ever be able to attend another one in my life, was the Cards-Mets game on Father's Day 1984 in Busch Stadium II. That's a potential story for another day, though, I think, at least in part, if not entirely, everyone. Well, that's enough for now, at least, I think. CD out.

04-08-2018, 10:35 AM	#29
5-4-3 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2017 Posts: 143	For those who don’t believe in the penalty - https://www.baseballprospectus.com/n...order-penalty/

04-09-2018, 03:01 PM	#30
NoOne Banned Join Date: Apr 2015 Posts: 7,273 Infractions: 1/2 (4)	fake news.. i don't like it.. fake news <buries head in sand> for the Cardinals fan -- bookmark your st. loius newspaper sports page. guarantee it's online and free. you can find your games streaming online.. may need a vpn to bypass any blackouts etc.. (despite popular belief, vpn's don't protect anything but your location - no matter what you have an ip address and it can be hacked - whether here or there doesn't matter at all. you should not do your online banking, or the like, while connected to a vpn -- nothing with credit card information or personal info etc.) if you read espn's feeds for your team, you'll notice almost all of the stories come from the wire (ap) -- it'll be nearly word for word or at least the same in regard to information communicated. at the local level the rest is just cyclical garbage they regurgitate every year and i guess no one remembers? at least in detroit that's how it works. pander to the lowest common denominator i can't read the free press or the news anymore. i stick to the minor league report the freep does and a few other articles here and there that aren't garbage. whether i read it with an espn or local flare doens't matter much anymore. it's all coming from the same source. (not a good thing outside of sports.. no big deal in sports)

04-09-2018, 03:27 PM	#31
5-4-3 Minors (Double A) Join Date: Apr 2017 Posts: 143	I like the baseball news I get from MLB Trade Rumors.

04-10-2018, 10:36 PM	#32
Clovidequano Dovatha Hall Of Famer Join Date: Feb 2018 Location: Somewhere in the United States of America on God's Earth Posts: 7,014	Grandma used to send me things periodically from the St. Louis area, including numerous clippings from the P-D, I believe, for many years when I was much younger than I am now. But eventually, of course, such mailing stopped, some time before her death nearly 15 years ago. She even made me at least one or two Cardinals-themed quilts, if I remember correctly. Where they might be, if they still exist now, I'm not really sure. But we didn't generally get to see much of each other in our lives after me and my family moved into Twins' territory, for obvious reasons. Oh, sure, she might periodically come to visit us at times, when possible. But we weren't generally able to come down to Missouri to visit her, for various reasons I can't share here, unfortunately. About the last time we were able to communicate with or see each other easily enough on a regular enough basis was just a few years before her eventual death in her 80's, if I remember correctly. I definitely do remember her sending me various things from the St. Louis area at least through the end of the 1998 season, if not up to sometime around the time Pujols debuted in the Majors, in any case, at least. She's been gone for a long time, but she is no less loved, even now, of course. I don't know what she would have thought of all this sabermetric stuff, but I do believe she at least liked, if not loved, seeing baseball, for reasons I may not know for sure, or at least not entirely. And I certainly don't know what my paternal grandfather would have thought about it, seeing as he died nearly 70 years ago this year, if memory serves me correctly, when my own dad was still young himself. Well, that's enough commentary about St. Louis and baseball, at least, I think, for this post here, folks. So I'll close this post, and wish you all a good night, or whatever, as circumstances might then permit for each of you, of course, then. CD out.