Brewers Offense vs. Quality of Pitching

[nullbyte]

This Florida series -- wins against Beckett and Burnett, and a loss to a relative no-name -- got me thinking. I wanted to see if, in fact, there really was a pattern: do the Brewers actually bat worse against below-average pitchers? Do they bat well against aces?

 

I compiled a list of games so far this year (128, nice round number), and along with each:

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp - The starter

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp - The starter's ERA on the year

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp - How many ERs the Brewers scored on the starter

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp - How many innings the starter pitched

and compared how well the Brewers score runs against different levels of pitching. For the purposes of this post, I'll call this "the spread": If the Brewers outperform the league average against a pitcher, they "win" against the spread. So, on to the results...

 

ERA under 2.50

Brewers 6-0 ats

Brewers score 4.54 ER/9

 

ERA 2.50-3.00

Brewers 6-5-1 ats (the "tie" was against Anthony Reyes of StL -- this was his only start of the year)

Brewers score 3.29 ER/9

 

ERA 3.00-3.50

Brewers 8-5 ats

Brewers score 4.84 ER/9

 

ERA 3.50-4.00

Brewers 9-13 ats

Brewers score 3.54 ER/9

 

ERA 4.00-4.50

Brewers 14-9 ats

Brewers score 5.02 ER/9

 

ERA 4.50-5.00

Brewers 13-15 ats

Brewers score 4.58 ER/9

 

ERA 5.00-5.50

Brewers 2-5 ats

Brewers score 3.86 ER/9

 

ERA 5.50-6.00

Brewers 5-1 ats

Brewers score 8.38 ER/9

 

ERA 6.00-6.50

Brewers 3-3 ats

Brewers score 6.75 ER/9

 

ERA 6.50+

Brewers 0-5 ats

Brewers score 2.70 ER/9

 

(the upper number in the ERA range is inclusive; lower number is not)

 

So those of us who have noticed how the offense generated is inversely proportional to the opposing pitcher's ERA... not crazy at all, at least on the extreme ends of the spectrum. The 0.50 ER/9 divisions are rather arbitrary, but maybe someone with some better Excel skills than me can make some graphics. The spreadsheet I used can be found here.

 

Anyways, it's certainly not the most scientific analysis, but it sure looks like there's a bit of a pattern there. Makes me wonder what psychological factors are at play...

[RyDogg66]

That is really interesting. Just taking that and breaking it off at 4.50 the Brewers record for League Average pitchers or better is

 

43-32-1 vs. Pitchers w/ ERA < 4.50

 

23-29 vs. Pitchers w/ ERA > 4.50

 

anyway, you have 128 games there, but the record would come out to 66-61-1, when the Brewers really are 63-65. Not sure where you get that variance from.

 

Maybe you could explain your original numbers a little better, Id be interested in hearing it.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, I see the W/L record is against the spread. That explains the variance. I'd still like to hear more about how you went about this.

[nullbyte]

Yeah, those are all records against the spread. Basically, I just looked at the single-game ERAs for each section and went game-by-game to determine the record. So, for the six games against sub-2.50 ERA pitchers, it looks like this:

 

 Date Opp Pitcher ERA ER IP Game ERA W/L ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Aug Hou R. Clemens 1.56 5 6.1 7.10 W (7.10 > 1.56) 2 Jul Pitt Z. Duke 1.81 3 7.0 3.86 W (3.86 > 1.81) 16 Apr Stl C. Carpenter 2.34 3 6.2 4.05 W (4.05 > 2.34) 27 Apr Stl C. Carpenter 2.34 3 7.2 3.52 W (3.52 > 2.34) 17 Jun Tor R. Halladay 2.41 4 6.0 6.00 W (6.00 > 2.41) 14 Jul Was J. Patterson 2.43 2 6.0 3.00 W (3.00 > 2.43) -------------Total------------ ? [b]20[/b] [b]39.2[/b] [b]4.54[/b] [b]6-0[/b]

 

So for those six games the Brewers are 6-0. With a little more time, I might see how each pitcher's ERA breaks down by innings pitched (the question mark spot): their average ERA among them could be used to look for further trends, maybe...

[rluzinski]

Here's the graph:

 

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a345/rluzinski/batting_era.gif

 

I guess that doesn't really tell you much. There doesn't seem to be much of a coorelation between pitching and batting ERA. Of course, it's really not that suprising that a pitcher with a 3.0 ERA can have significantly different results over each 6-7 inning appearance.

 

It is interesting to look at the 5 data points past 6.0 ERA. Those 5 appearances included Hudson from Cinci (TWICE) and Hideo Nomo (bleh).

[nullbyte]

Cool, thanks. Yeah, it's pretty wild, as I kind of expected. I wonder what a regression line would look like. You'd expect (over long term, for a normal team) it to have a slope of 1... something tells me the slope would be somewhat less. It'd be pretty embarrassing if it was negative http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif

[nullbyte]

http://www.russellrankings.com/null/erachart.gif

 

I have no idea if that's useful, other than to show how goofy this team is http://forum.brewerfan.net/images/smilies/smile.gif