Menu
Season Ticket Baseball
  • Home
  • Buy
  • Reviews
  • Downloads
  • Blog
  • Example of Play
  • Home
  • Buy
  • Reviews
  • Downloads
  • Blog
  • Example of Play

Lefty-Righty Splits on Pitcher Cards

2/17/2022

0 Comments

 
​Some of you may have noticed that the batting averages included on the pitcher cards don't match the numbers on sites like Baseball-Reference.

For example, Johnny Antonelli's 1955 card (at right) lists his "BA vs. L/R" as ".203/.246". The corresponding averages at Baseball-Reference are ".204" and ".244".


There are 3 reasons for this:

1. I had some bad data for the 1955 season. This has been fixed.​
Picture
2. The data is incomplete. Most data sources don't include the number of Sacrifice Hits (SH) and Sacrifice Flies (SF) allowed by each pitcher. Because SH and SF aren't counted as at-bats, they need to be subtracted from the number of Batters Faced (BF) to calculate the Batting Average allowed by each pitcher. We estimate SH and SF allowed by each pitcher, causing the "BA vs. L/R" calculations to differ by a few points from other databases.
​3. Lefty-righty stats are incomplete before 1972.
You can find SF and SH if you drill down to individual season splits, but these splits are often incomplete. For example, the "1955 Splits" page at Baseball-Reference for Ruben Gomez shows 111 hits allowed versus righties and 76 hits allowed versus lefties — this is 20 hits short of the total number of hits (207) allowed by Gomez in 1955. Where lefty-righty split stats are missing, we estimate them using a player's career stats.
Picture
0 Comments

What's a "K23"?

2/8/2022

0 Comments

 
"K23" is the scoring abbreviation for a play in which the catcher drops the third strike, allowing the batter to run to first base (because of baseball's "dropped third strike rule"). The catcher fields the loose ball and throws to first to force out the batter. The play is both a strikeout (K) and a 2-3 force out.

Many baseball fans think of this as a rare play, but it occurs fairly often. About 3% of strikeouts result in the catcher dropping the third strike (or catching it after it has bounced). 
Picture
Ryan Kalish tries to reach first base safely on a dropped third strike. (Photo by Eric Kilby. CC BY-SA 2.0)
Because of this, early versions of Season Ticket Baseball include K23 results on every catcher's Defense Table. But here's the problem: I don't like the K23 result. It's not fun or interesting. (It is fun and interesting when the ball gets away from the catcher and the batter reaches safely. But this play is much rarer).

It's also not realistic to describe all these "dropped third strikes" as 'K23'. Sometimes the catcher tags the batter. And sometimes the batter just walks back to the dugout and is called out by the umpire.

Finally, the rule is complicated. For example, if there is a runner on first and less than two outs, the batter is automatically ruled out — to prevent the catcher from intentionally dropping a third strike in order to create a double play — changing a 'K23' to a simple 'K'.

Therefore, I'm in the process of changing all K23 results to "2-3" ground outs (and adjusting the results on other cards to make up for this change). If you think the K23 result is interesting and you don't like this change, you can interpret all 'K' results on the catcher's Defense Table as K23. This will fairly accurately represent the number of dropped third strikes without altering strikeout totals.
0 Comments

    Updates

    The Season Ticket Baseball blog. Check back for product updates.

    Archives

    February 2023
    December 2022
    May 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed