I reported last month that over the past 10 years or so, a few teams benefitted more than their rivals in terms of the frequency of favorable pitch calls from umpires. I’d hoped to do a more detailed study of that data, but when I began receiving data sets of each season’s individual pitches, I soon found they needed cleaning, and so that is being done.
In the aforementioned post, I wrote that the raw number of favorable calls is less important than when they come. Taking an 0-0 pitch, while important, is not as big as taking 3-2, where the difference is between an out and a base runner.
Since I have the 2022 data in hand, I was able to answer questions about which teams this year made out the best in terms of the value of the calls they received.
Of course, raw numbers of called balls and strikes are not as insightful as they would be with tracking data. It’s not all about, or even mostly about the umps. The quality of teams’ pitchers and hitters matter.
The parks also appear to have a large impact on the percentage of pitches taken for balls, and why the extreme teams tended to be one-sided, gaining a huge number of runs above average from calls going in favor of either their hitters or pitchers, while being below average the other way around.
To those unwilling to read further for the gory details, I’ll tell you up front that the Hanshin Tigers, Yomiuri Giants and Yakult Swallows got the most total value out of pitches taken by their hitters and against their pitchers in 2022, while I’ll give fans of the Lotte Marines and Hiroshima Carp additional incentive to feel their teams may have been done dirty by the umps.
Pitch values
To measure the impact of getting more than the normal number of called balls on pitches taken by batters and against pitchers, we start with the run value a ball in every one of the 12 possible counts adds to the likely outcome of the plate appearance compared to a strike.
These are ranked from the highest to lowest leverage in the plate appearance based on the 2022 data.
| Count | Ball value | Strike value | Ball gain |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-2 | .3429 | -.1110 | .4539 |
| 2-2 | .1499 | -.1110 | .2609 |
| 1-2 | .1109 | -.1110 | .2219 |
| 3-0 | .3429 | .1441 | .1988 |
| 3-1 | .3429 | .1499 | .1930 |
| 0-2 | .0645 | -.1110 | .1755 |
| 1-0 | .17857 | .0763 | .1023 |
| 2-0 | .2027 | .1226 | .0801 |
| 0-0 | .1248 | .0637 | .0611 |
| 1-1 | .1226 | .0645 | .0581 |
| 0-1 | .0763 | .0462 | .0301 |
With these in hand I broke down how many more or fewer calls than average each team received as hitters and pitchers and calculated the run value in each count for each team’s pitchers and hitters.
The home games
The following table gives the ratio of balls to total pitches taken by both teams in each NPB team’s home games in 2022, with the number of standard deviations that figure is above or below the NPB mean.
| Team | Balls / pitches taken | Standard deviations |
|---|---|---|
| Giants | .684 | +1.5 |
| Lions | .684 | +1.5 |
| Hawks | .681 | +1.3 |
| BayStars | .678 | +0.9 |
| Fighters | .674 | +0.5 |
| Dragons | .672 | +0.3 |
| Swallows | .672 | +0.3 |
| Eagles | .665 | -0.4 |
| Marines | .664 | -0.5 |
| Carp | .662 | -0.8 |
| Buffaloes | .661 | -0.8 |
| Tigers | .654 | -1.5 |
Winners and losers
The winner for most value in a single count by the pitchers or hitters from NPB’s 12 teams goes to the Yomiuri Giants’ hitters on first pitches, when they gained an estimated 9.3 runs in 2022. The Giants as a team owned 0-0 counts in 2022, with their pitchers collecting an extra 5.4 runs on first pitches taken by opposing batters, the fourth highest figure among the 12 teams’ pitchers in any single count.
The Giants gained 14.7 runs on 0-0 calls. NPB’s second best combined offensive and defensive team count for one team was the Swallows’ 8.1 runs on 0-0, while the Giants owned 1-0 with 7.8 runs. The Chunichi Dragons had NPB’s worst single count results, giving up 11.9 runs more than the NPB average over the course of the season for first-pitch takes (3.7 runs by their hitters, 8.2 runs by their pitchers).
One of the things I’ve noticed when looking at the differences between the Central and Pacific leagues is that most CL teams have followed the Giants in trying to hit a corner with the first pitch, while the PL teams, and Yakult, have in the last few years tended more to try and get ahead with the first pitch by putting it in the zone.
If other seasons’ data mimic 2022, then there’s probably a good reason the Giants’ policy has become about trying to get opposing batters to chase early. If your team consistently gets more than its share of favorable calls on 0-0 and 1-0, why would you risk throwing the first two pitches anywhere near the middle of the zone?
Overall winners and losers
2022 rankings in terms of the most combined value in runs over the course of the season on pitches taken by each team’s hitters and against its pitchers.
As usual, the Fighters are an anomaly here. Despite more than an average number of pitches taken for balls in their home games, the Fighters mimicked their manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo in being really bad at taking pitches. It’s going to be really interesting to see what will happen in 2023 what a team whose manager prioritizes hacking will do after its only really disciplined hitter, Kensuke Kondo, has left as a free agent.
| Team | Total R | Batters | Pitchers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tigers | +19.9 | -8.9 | +28.8 |
| Giants | +17.0 | +25.2 | -8.2 |
| Swallows | +10.6 | +11.9 | -1.3 |
| Lions | +8.5 | +18.6 | -10.1 |
| Fighters | +8.3 | -3.3 | +11.6 |
| BayStars | +8.2 | +5.7 | +2.5 |
| Buffaloes | +3.6 | -9.7 | +13.3 |
| Eagles | +2.3 | +3.0 | -0.7 |
| Hawks | -6.4 | +8.4 | -14.8 |
| Dragons | -8.9 | -6.5 | -2.4 |
| Marines | -25.6 | -16.8 | -8.8 |
| Carp | -38.7 | -27.4 | -11.3 |
Some other notes
Full counts were interesting in that five teams’ pitching staffs did really well on 3-2, while the rest of NPB was below average. The Tigers gained 6.4 runs on 3-2 pitches taken by opposing hitters, the Buffaloes 4.5 runs, the Dragons 4.1 runs and the Fighters and BayStars 3.6 runs each.
If it is true that the Giants get presents on 0-0 and 1-0, then 3-2 is where that bill came due for their pitchers, with an NPB-worst -9.1 runs, while Yakult’s hitters led NPB by gaining 5.4 runs on 3-2 counts, followed by Seibu at 2.7. The Fighters’ hitters were the worst at -5.0 runs.
Once I get my hands on the cleaned data from 2009 to 2021, we’ll be able to see better how much of this is due to parks and how much of it is due to other things.
