Buehler Can’t Have a ‘Day Off’
Note: special thanks to co-author Steve Sandmeyer aka Sandy
Game 3 is upon us as we continue our analysis of the World Series using Google Cloud. Can the Dodgers make a series out of it? Or will the Red Sox win at least 2 of 3 in L.A. this weekend to clinch their fourth World Series title in the last 14 years? Pitching matchups are always a good place to start.
NOTE: You can hack on similar data in BiqQuery by heading over to our public datasets hosted on Google Cloud. After the World Series we will post new data from 2018.
Tonight, veteran Rick Porcello (BOS) takes on youngster Walker Buehler (LAD) in Dodger Stadium. In terms of experience, Porcello is a decorated Major League starter. He’s a 10-year veteran, a former Cy Young Award winner (with BOS in 2016), and has pitched in six different postseasons (3 with DET and 3 with BOS). Buehler, meanwhile, is a Major League rookie, who made his big league debut by logging 9.1 innings as a 22-year old last season. This year, he started 23 games and logged 137.1 IP in his first full season as a 23-year old.
For this post we decided to stay in pure SQL land, reusing some over views we built in our last post on just how much the Red Sox dominate 2–2 counts. Skill #1 in software and data engineering is copy and paste! And it turns out we were able to easily convert our count analysis into pitch type analysis by changing a few lines of code in BigQuery.
SELECT*,RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY pitch_type ORDER BY BA ASC) as opp_BA_rank,RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY pitch_type ORDER BY OBP ASC) as opp_OBP_rank,RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY pitch_type ORDER BY SLG ASC) as opp_SLG_rankFROM(… AWESOME UNDERLYING VIEW THAT CALCULATES STATS FOR EVERY PITCH …)
We also had to tweak some columns to account for perspective, specifically opponent’s metrics vs. hitting team’s metrics. A bit of coffee and some SQL wrangling and we have some fun data to look at for game 3 between Buehler and Porcello.
While Porcello has been a known commodity for years, what can we learn from Buehler’s first full season and how might his stuff play against the dangerous Red Sox lineup? For starters, Buehler is essentially a four pitch (fastball variant) guy — fastball (4-seam, 2-seam), knuckle-curveball, slider, cutter — with an occasional change
He is a power pitcher with good ancillary stuff. Buehler struck out 151 hitters in just 137.1 innings pitched during the regular season. He started game 7 of the NLCS against Milwaukee and struck out 7 in just 4.2 IP as the Dodgers went on to win the pennant with a 5–1 victory.
How does this stack up against the Red Sox in term of pitch type?
The Red Sox hold twelve top 5 ranks across BA, OBP and SLG with their only main “weakness” on two seam fastballs, which is Buehler’s second best weapon (weighing frequency).
Now let’s turn to count analysis. How does Buehler fare relative to count?
Buehler’s best rank (weighting frequency) is when the batter puts it in play on the first pitch of the at bat (opp BA on 0–0). He is middle of the road at 0–2 and is slightly more vulnerable at 1–1. Keep in mind the delta in these ranks are razor thin, in the top 50 they are separated by .001 percent
Nerd wise, the next step is to cross these views, specifically looking at count and pitch type pairing and of course you can add more dimensions like time and score situation. At the end of day you could build one huge matrix for every pitch or you could just sit back and watch the game ;-)
The game of baseball is played in much more compressed style in the postseason and during the World Series. Every pitch and every pitch sequence matters. A pivotal weekend in Los Angeles begins tonight, as the host Dodgers are desperate to make a series out of this. Boston has been murderous at the plate in almost any situation. It would help if the Dodgers would hit a little bit too. Maybe we should write a post on that subject — if the series isn’t over before we have the chance…
