Fouling at Nothing | FanGraphs Baseball

On Monday evening, I had the privilege of attending a recreation by which the Reds’ greatest left-handed starter, Andrew Abbott, confronted the Phillies’ greatest left-handed hitter, Bryce Harper, thrice. Abbott obtained the higher of Harper, who went 0-for-3 with a strikeout towards the Cincinnati starter and 0-for-5 total. However the qualities of every participant obtained me considering.

When Harper swings the bat, one in every of two issues occurs. In state of affairs no. 1, he squares it up and hits it so onerous it causes bruising on the deceased ancestors of the employees who stitched the ball collectively on the Rawlings manufacturing facility. Positive sufficient, Harper tagged Abbott’s teammates for 3 residence runs simply 24 hours later.

In any other case, Harper misses it. He can miss it by loads, by which case he simply swings by way of it, or he misses it by a bit. These swings manifest themselves both in balls fouled straight again to the display, or in fly balls that go straight up within the air and keep there lengthy sufficient for the outfielder to take out his telephone, and queue up Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell,” so the ball lands proper on the climax of the second refrain. You recognize the half: “Like a sinner / earlier than / the gates of Heaven / I’ll come crawling on again to you.” The loud one, like 5 and a half minutes into the music.

Abbott is an fascinating matchup for this sort of hitter, as a result of he lives and dies by “misses it by a bit.” His model of pitching is just like the angled armor on a major battle tank, which is designed to not take in the affect of an incoming projectile however to deflect and disperse it in a path the place it could’t do any hurt.

For instance: The third-inning fly out Abbott induced towards Harper, which got here off the bat at 95.4 mph. Final common season, Harper put 160 balls in play at 95 mph or extra; 92 of them had been base hits, 47 extra-base hits, and 21 had been residence runs. This one, which got here off a dangling curveball, traveled an innocuous 244 ft and have become an out, as a result of Harper simply obtained beneath it.

It was that sort of evening for Harper, who noticed 20 pitches and fouled off 5 of them. However it obtained me considering: Is there one thing to that just-missed-it foul ball? It’s an article of baseball religion, in spite of everything, {that a} pitch that’s fouled straight again is nearer to being hit on the screws than most balls which might be really put in play. Is there a correlation between how good a hitter (or a pitcher) is and what number of foul balls he produces?

An in-depth examine would contain testing a number of hypotheses utilizing a number of types of knowledge. I had Baseball Savant, Microsoft Excel, and someplace between six to eight hours to get this concept from conception to editorial doneness. Weblog is Life.

For the needs of this train, I selected to review all pitches from the 2023 common season, the 2023 postseason, and all main league common season motion by way of April 1. And I restricted the pattern to pitchers who had thrown 750 or extra pitches (there have been 391 of them in complete) and batters who had seen 750 or extra pitches (371 of them in complete).

Listed below are the highest 10 pitchers and hitters in foul ball price.

See a sample? I don’t, actually. There are good pitchers and dangerous pitchers, good hitters and dangerous hitters. The hitters do are usually free swingers, and quick, for what it’s price. Perez is the one hitter within the high 10 with a listed top better than 6-foot.

However that will get into an issue with measuring uncooked whiff price. As a result of you need to swing with a purpose to swing and miss, extra aggressive hitters will hit extra foul balls. In sort of a fishing expedition, I discovered the correlation coefficient between foul ball share and numerous plate self-discipline stats and total offensive metrics. If this had been an instructional paper — and you’ll inform it’s not, as a result of there was a Meat Loaf reference above the break — I’d provide you with a desk with all these values within the title of scientific transparency. However as a result of this can be a much less formal publication, I received’t trouble.

Belief me, it’s only a bunch of zeroes, for each hitters and pitchers. The one stat that comes out with a robust correlation is swing price. So let’s account for that. Does foul balls per swing predict any measure of offensive high quality?

The hitters are no less than getting up over 0.10 in a few of these classes, which might be simply noise, however no less than it’s not a slam dunk for the null speculation.

Let’s have a look at the leaderboards for foul balls per swing and see if that tells us something. Right here’s the highest 10 for each hitters and pitchers:

And the underside 10:

We’re getting nearer, however there are good and dangerous pitchers on each of those lists. The hitters with excessive foul-per-swing ratios are usually aggressive hitters who do numerous injury — you’ll be able to see a few of the holdovers from the swing aircraft revolution in there — whereas those who don’t foul off numerous pitches are simply free swingers, interval. In reality, if there’s a unifying development on the underside 10 hitters checklist, it’s guys whose wRC+ should be about 20 factors greater than it was final 12 months: Báez, Jiménez, Chisholm, Castellanos.

Let’s strive one final ratio: Fouls per whiff. Not solely does this null out the aggressiveness issue, a better foul-to-whiff ratio would imply {that a} hitter isn’t lacking by a lot. Conversely, pitchers who permit comparatively few foul balls per whiff are usually not solely lacking the barrel, they’re routinely lacking the entire bat.

Now we’re getting someplace. This means a reasonably robust linear relationship between pitchers’ foul/whiff ratios and their outcomes. Particularly: After they permit extra foul balls per whiff, they permit a better opponent wOBA and xwOBA, and the other. Conversely, hitters who foul off numerous pitches per whiff have a better barrel price per batted ball occasion, however a decrease HardHit%. Each relationships are pretty robust, however they go in reverse instructions.

That’s about to make extra sense. As soon as once more, let’s have a look at the highest 10 and backside 10 on this ratio.

The highest 10 hitters in foul balls per whiff are both Punch-and-Judy hitters or absolutely the S-tier bat management freaks. In fact there’s a unfavourable correlation between foul balls per whiff and HardHit%; the hitters with the very best foul-to-whiff ratios are going up there enjoying a finesse tennis recreation and hitting .320 on a weight-reduction plan of sentimental line drives. Goal small, miss small.

Conversely, the checklist of pitchers with the bottom foul-to-whiff ratios is only a checklist of the nastiest relievers in baseball, and the accompanying checklist of hitters is a bunch of men who swing from their heels. Maybe that’s a bit unkind; you is usually a good hitter total whereas not fouling many pitches off. Rooker was an All-Star final 12 months, and Aaron Choose missed being on the tip of this checklist by three spots. And once more, in terms of outcomes for hitters, foul balls per whiff is fairly agnostic in terms of efficiency.

As a lot enjoyable as this was, measuring hitter or pitcher high quality by monitoring foul balls is a bit like figuring out the load of land-based animals by measuring the width of their ears. You’ll find yourself pointing in the correct path, simply because the highest of your checklist will likely be dominated by elephants, however there are a lot less complicated methods to get to the correct reply.

However, I nonetheless consider there’s a correlation between high quality of contact and fouling the ball straight again. With extra detailed knowledge — and within the fingers of a extra succesful statistician — there is likely to be some worthwhile perception to be gained.