Pitcher rating and stats

 

Who were the best, worst and most efficient Pitchers in 2020?

Since the end of the 2020 regular season I have been working on some statistical analysis of pitcher’s performance in games. When I first became interested in pesäpallo I was surprised that there weren’t any statistics for pitchers or team’s defence at all. At the time, there was very little in the way of statistics for fielders in baseball or cricket and it was in fact a major talking point amongst MLB fans and commentators. In both cricket and baseball however there has always been a method of calculating a pitcher/bowler’s performance, usually based on the number of runs scored against them measured against the number of batters they faced or innings/overs they played. Pesis didn't seem to have any equivalent, which led me to wonder two things: (1) why are there no statistics? (2) what would the statistics look like if they did exist?

Why are there currently no pitching/defence statistics

To answer this question, you have to look at what the current statistics represent and why they are recorded. Statistics in pesis record the number of successful attempts to move the point runner to the next base against the total number of attempts. If a runner for example is on 3rd base and the batter successfully moves a runner from 1st to 2nd base, this is not recorded. The emphasis on the game is very much: whether the batting team are successful at advancing their point runners and making it safely home. When runners or are out, they are recorded as an unsuccessful attempt, in the same way as when runners are “Haava” (removed from play without being recorded as out). From a batting perspective the current statistics help a game manager evaluate how successful their offensive strategies were, but the same isn’t necessarily true for the opposing game manager in terms of evaluating how well their team did defensively.

The best way to gauge success or failure will of course always be to analyse and watch the games intently, often pausing, rewinding or using slow-motion to see where successes or failures occurred. In reality, the casual fan does not have the time to pour over the games in such detail, but may still want to know in a more measurable way “how is my team playing compared to others in in the league?”

Recently the Pesäpallo federation has announced that the long awaited overhaul of statistics in pesis will be released very soon. This is a very exciting development for fans and I cannot wait to see what the new system looks like. I do wonder however, will the new statistics include pitcher/defensive statistics?

What would pitcher/defensive statistics look like

Based on the current recorded information, I decided to create my own spreadsheet that can analyse pitcher/defence performance. A link to the full spreadsheet is on the page below. 

https://superpesisroundup.blogspot.com/p/pitcher-stats.html

My first thought was: what statistics matter when considering a pitcher’s abilities that I can meaningfully put together from the opposing batting team’s statistics that I can already get? 

The first obvious answer was an earned run average (also known as ERA). This is a statistical tool used in baseball to calculate the amount of runs that a pitcher would allow (on average) if they pitched for an entire game. The calculation ignores any “errors” that the fielding team allow, as these are strictly not the fault of the pitcher.

On the back of that, I then wondered about how consistent pitchers were in giving up the same number of runs per full game (over 8 innings). This may help fans to consider how likely their pitcher is to have unpredictable blow-out games, where the opposing team could all of a sudden overcome a huge deficit; it could also help fans think about whether the team had “scored enough runs” to be “safe” and secure a win, as they know that their pitcher consistently is less likely to give up enough runs for he opposing team to win.

Finally I thought that a good measure of the pitcher’s ability is more akin to the success rating that a Quarterback has in American Football. Over the past year in particular, I have come to understand the role of the pitcher in far more tactical terms and the comparison to a quarterback has been made a number of times by people I have spoken to.

So how did I calculate these statistics...

Earned Run Average

The ERA in baseball calculates the number of earned runs during the time a pitcher was pitching, then divides it by the number of innings they pitched, before multiplying by 9. For pesis I basically did the same. For “earned runs” I decided to remove harhaheitto, as these are “wild throws” that should be credited to a specific fielder rather than the pitcher. I looked at how many innings a pitcher pitched in the game (usually 8, but often 7 or 9) and then used the same formula that is used in baseball.

Consistency

Once I had the ERA for each game, the question of consistency was actually fairly easy. In my view, a consistent pitcher would give up runs generally speaking by way of a binomial distribution; meaning that on average more ERA results per game would be close to their season average ERA, with the occasional very good and very bad performance sitting outside that range. To calculate what that range is (and therefore the pitcher’s consistency)  I calculated the standard deviation of the pitcher’s ERA from their season average ERA. The lower the figure, the more consistent the pitcher was during 2020.

Efficiency Rating

Unlike the above two calculations, I had to completely start from the beginning: there is no equivalent (I thought) that would work for this statistic. I decided that I wanted the efficiency rating to be a “weighted” score that showed the importance of preventing successful hits from 3rd base to home more than 2nd to 3rd etc. 

The calculation also needed to factor in the overall efficiency of getting outs - after all this is the ultimate measure of success for a defence. Because pesis has the unique rule about runners being removed from bases without being “out”, there is no simple equation to show that the “unsuccessful” hits were necessarily a “success” for the pitcher. In fact it is often the case that the batting team will tactically want to remove slower runners from base to make way for faster ones or for a better batter to come to the plate. The reverse is also true where the defensive team purposefully drops a catch to load the basis and put pressure on the batting team.

In the end, I decided that the important thing was for a pitcher to have fewer batters that they face for every out they take in a game; the more batters means the more opportunities to score and the less efficient the pitcher has been at getting outs. 

So I then calculated the average number of batters per out the pitcher would face and calculated how successful the batting team was at reaching the 4 bases. I then gave weight to each base by multiplying each result by the number of the base (for example 1st base is multiplied by 1, 4th base is multiplied by 4). The score is then subtracted from 100 to give a weighted “percentage” of efficiency (although it isn’t a true percentage in terms of successful hits per out generally speaking).

The results

Here are the tables ranking each pitcher (who pitched more than 1 game) in order of each category:

 

Conclusions on the 2020 regular season

Looking at my stats for pitchers, I made a number of observations. Some of the observations are stating the obvious to fans who followed the league last year, but interestingly the statistics show the magnitude of success or failure in black and white terms. Also, the fact that most of my observations fit in with the general thoughts people have about various pitchers suggests that they are actually quite accurate and meaningful.

My main observations were:

1. Sotkamo took a big risk with Aapo Komulainen when Ville Väliaho was pitching very consistently, but this risk paid off and Aapo was more efficient and consistent as well as having a lower ERA. Despite this Ville remained one of the best pitchers in the league;

2. Joona Sikiö was a very efficient and consistent pitcher, but allowed more runs than some of the other top pitchers;

3. Kale-Tappio Huusko underperformed massively, ranking as one of the least efficient and inconsistent pitchers in the league. In addition Tahko had more unforced errors than any other team that made the playoffs and the second worst in the league;

4. Perttu Ruuska’s efficiency improved greatly during the season, increasing from 83.75 in the first half of the season to 86.13 in the second half;

The biggest shock for me was how consistent and how efficient IPV’s pitcher was, yet the team failed to reach the playoffs. Perhaps IPV is the biggest mystery of the 2020 season, as they had some of the best players in terms of batting statistics also. I will probably do a post that analysis the 2020 season for IPV in coming weeks.

Photographs

Cover - (c) Sotkamon Jymy 2020