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Problems with punch-outs

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The other day HERE I tried to answer the question whether foreign hitters in Nippon Professional Baseball have larger strike zones or not by looking at the percentage of strikeouts that are decided by a called third strike.

Having done that, I realized that individual variation makes such an analysis really, really murky. Some players hack, some are more disciplined. Pitchers that lack a good swing-and-miss pitch should conceivably have a higher CST (Called Third Strike) percentage.

Still, the study did lead to an interesting observation about the nature of Japan’s two leagues. As some of you know, either the Pacific League is the stronger of Japan’s two leagues or it’s just really, really good at hiding that fact, considering how poorly Central League teams do in interleague play and in the Japan Series.

The umpire merger

From 2003 until 2010, Pacific League position players were taking called third strikes in 20.53 percent of their strikeouts. In the Central League, the percentage was 22.84. The PL was dominated at the time by huge ballparks, where home runs were less frequent.

Since the umpires of the two leagues merged from the start of thew 2011 season, the PL called-third-strike percentage rose to 21.57, while the CL’s dropped slightly to 22.73.

The managers

In the previous article, I suggested that managers might be affecting how often called third strikes went their teams’ ways. But that was probably incorrect, for the same reason that judging individual hitters is fraught with danger. Unless you have the photographic evidence of the pitches in question, you can’t really tell.

Managers WILL effect the number of third strikes called against their team because of their batting and pitching policies. A look at how each manager’s team did relative to its league, shows that from 2003 to 2018 shows some interesting stuff, but it’s just that: interesting stuff.

Consider curmudgeonly “kantoku” Katsuya Nomura. His Rakuten Eagles struck out 3,369 times over his four seasons in charge, and his players went down on called third strikes 6.03 percent more often than the league, his Eagles were taken out of at-bats by umpires 203 extra times.

Anyway, the manager whose teams have ostensibly benefited the most from the umpires’ calls were Hisanobu Watanabe (Seibu Lions) with 92 fewer called third strikes on his hitters and 106 extra called strikes for his pitchers. No. 2 on this list (2003-2018) is Trey Hillman overall +194, and Koichi Ogata (+186). At the other end are: Nomura (-242), Hideki Kuriyama (-239), Akinobu Okada (-137) and Bobby Valentine (-136).

That’s interesting, but if you look at those Eagles hitters, what do you see? Tons of walks, few strikeouts. That was a team led on offense by Takeshi Yamasaki, a power hitter who frustrated managers and teammates by taking tons of called third strikes. He rarely swung at a two-strike pitch if he thought it might be outside of his zone, often putting his fate in the umps’ hands.

Again, I don’t think there is anything the least bit instructive about those. I just thought they were fun. But as mentioned above, managers can have a real effect on how their teams play. Take the DeNA BayStars, for example.

The Alex Ramirez effect

When Alex Ramirez took over the DeNA BayStars in 2015, his most public policy was telling his players to “swing at the first strike.”

What happens when batters execute this tactic? Here’s what happened in 2018, comparing the results of 17,792 plate appearances started by a swing or a first-pitch ball (as the 2015 BayStars were instructed to execute), and the the 48,046 PAs in which the first pitch was taken.

OptionPAAvg.OBPSlug
Swing 1st-pitch strike, take 1st-pitch ball17,792.272.305.424
Take 1st pitch regardless48,046.251.336.392

There is overlap of course, since first-pitch balls fall into both camps. But those looking to drill the first strike hit for average and more power, but paid for it in more outs and a lower on-base percentage. This goes a little bit in explaining the career of Ramirez — a guy who hit for good average, became the first foreign-registered player with 2,000 hits, and hit for good power, but didn’t draw walks unless he had to.

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Atsuya Furuta & Japan’s Hall of Fame catchers

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Let’s begin with a disclaimer. Atsuya Furuta, who was recently voted into Japan’s Baseball Hall of Fame, was my favorite player in Nippon Professional Baseball. He was a superb defensive catcher, a heck of a hitter and a leader on the field and for the player’s union as well. What’s not to like?

Furuta and his first Yakult Swallows manager Katsuya Nomura are the only two postwar catchers voted into the Hall of Fame based solely on their playing careers. Nomura is a no-brainer, a catcher who for one season held Japan’s single-season home run record. He holds the NPB record for total games played with 3,017 and is second in career hits with 2,901 and home runs (657).

One of the problems comparing players from different eras in baseball history is the dramatic fluctuation of context. Some of the contextual differences are due to equipment changes (particularly in Japan, the balls) and some to doctrinal changes. In an effort to iron out some of the kinks in order to form a data base for a projection system, I normalized NPB’s postwar data to the 2013 season – when every team was using the same (legal) ball for the first time.

The changes to total career numbers are remarkably small, although players with long, productive careers while playing shorter seasons, will see some fairly big increases. Just to give you some idea of how these work out, Sadaharu Oh’s normalized home run total – which includes transplanting him into a 144-game season after playing 130 games for most of his career – is 916 in 3,086 career games as opposed to the 868 he hit in 2,831 games. The system says he’d hit 4 percent fewer home runs per plate appearance if every year were 2013, but he’d play in 9 percent more career games.

Getting back to catchers, the normalized career data has Nomura as the greatest hitting catcher in NPB history, which is no shocker. But what about Furuta?

The first thing we have to ask is who gets elected. As mentioned in the previous post, there are precious few position players in the Hall and most of those are from the low-value end of the defensive spectrum, outfielders and corner infielders. Of those who have made it from the mid 1960s or later, nobody has gotten in with fewer than 7,500 plate appearances. So if we limit the discussion to catchers with that many plate appearances, there are just three after Nomura and one, Motonobu Tanishige – the current player manager of the Chunichi Dragons – is not eligible.

That’s the catching 22: Because being a catcher is so tough on your body, few catchers can survive long enough to be seen as worthy candidates.

Furuta, with 8,115 career plate appearances, cleared that hurdle and has a normalized career OPS of .775 – not Nomura territory (.922) – but none too shabby. His contemporary and three-time Japan Series counterpart Tsutomu Ito, had 8,191 plate appearances for the Seibu Lions, but wasn’t the hitter Furuta was, with a .642 normalized OPS. Tanishige is a little better off, but not much.

Winning a batting title and a Central League MVP award didn’t hurt Furuta, nor did throwing out 46 percent of the base runners who tried to steal against him. He was also a key player on four Japan Series champions. Ito was a key player on the Lions’ dynasty from the late 1980s through the early 1990s and won 11 Golden Gloves.

Ito, who has been on the ballot for seven years, got 96 votes of the 249 needed in the most recent election to reach the required 75 percent. It’s hard to see him getting more support at the moment.

But are there other candidates besides Ito and the still active Tanishige?

If one lowers the standard for admission for catchers to 6,500 plate appearances, then we get a couple of former players with extremely good credentials: Tatsuhiko Kimata and Koichi Tabuchi.

Kimata, the Chunichi Dragons’ principle catcher from 1965 to 1980, hit 285 career homers with a .782 OPS, while winning five CL Best IX awards and throwing out 39 percent of base-stealers from 1970, when that data is available. Kimata’s normalized career OPS is a few ticks higher than Furuta’s at .790.

Tabuchi, who is still on the “Experts Division” ballot – voted on by living Hall of Famers — and got 22 of the 81 votes needed this year, won two Golden Gloves and was also a five-time Best IX winner, with 474 career homers and an .896 OPS – which is in Nomura territory. Tabuchi, however, only caught 944 career games. He spent a little time at first base, but what the heck: There are six post-war first basemen in the Hall, and Tabuchi’s offensive numbers are as good or better than three of them.

Kimata, who is no longer eligible, and Tabuchi belong in the Hall of Fame. Ito is a maybe as is Tanishige, but voters have been kind to guys with really long careers, and Tanishige has caught 2,938 games. Another catcher who will definitely get in is Giants star Shinnosuke Abe. With a normalized OPS of .866, Abe will be moving to first base this year after catching 1,641 games. He’s won an MVP and should have won two. Kenji Jojima’s name is also worth mention although his offensive numbers were seriously inflated by high-flying baseballs during his best years with the Daiei Hawks and his career was extremely short by Hall of Fame standards.