Who are the worst hitting pitchers of all time? I’ve got no magic criteria, but it’s easy find some guys who were epic fails at the plate.

Rob Herbel pitched in 332 games in the 60s and early 70s, mostly for the Giants. He managed only six hits in 227 plate appearances for an anemic .029 batting average. He struck out 125 times (55% of PAs) and walked only eight times. Actually, one third of his hits were doubles, which raised his OPS to .104. I bet a few of those doubles were hit to sleeping outfielders.

Dean Chance won the AL Cy Young in 1964 and accumulated 759 plate appearances in 406 games. He recorded 44 hits, all but two of which were singles. He struck out 420 times (55%) and walked only 30 times. With 128 wins and a 2.92 career ERA, he’s probably the best pitcher ever who was useless with a bat in his hands.

Of the active guys, Tommy Hanson & Ben Sheets are notable. Hanson is 11 for 187 (.059) with 92 strikeouts, 5 walks, and zero extra-base hits. Sheets is 34 for 449 (.076) with 212 Ks and 19 walks.

Although Randy Tate was in the bigs for only one year, he holds the distinction of having the most career plate appearances (47) without a hit. He did manage to draw one walk, though! In six minor league seasons he hit .113, so I guess ’75 was just a down year for him. Tate had an unusually symmetric career: three years in the minors, followed by one full season with the Mets (He pitched in every month of the ’75 season.), followed by three more years in the minors. He was never called up during his minor league seasons, and wasn’t sent down during his only major league season!

And, finally, of the pitchers with the dubious distinction of never having reached base safely ever, the guy with the most plate appearances (33) is none other than Justin Verlander. I think I’ve heard that he’s a decent pitcher, though. Verlander did not reach base during his three post-season PAs, and he never went to the plate during his 20-game minor league career. Let’s hope that the increase in interleague play will give Justin the chance to get off the schneid in 2013.

• Righties pitch 80% of innings.
• Righties start 80% of games.
• Starters pitch 73% of innings.
• The average start lasts 6.35 innings.
• The average relief appearance lasts 1.45 innings.

The surprise to me was that, apart from the fact that they’re used in different amounts, righties and lefties are used very similarly. Lefty starters stay in the game as long as righties. (A bit longer in fact!)

The biggest difference seems to be that the average relief outing is longer for righties, 1.48 innings vs. 1.33 for lefties. That’s the LOOGY factor, but I thought the difference would be even greater.

The totals are shown below, grouped into a few different comparison pairs.

               2012     2013

Good Batters     17       23     +35%

Good Starters     9       14     +56%

Good Relievers   21       21     + 0%

Here’s what Titusville got:

(Round/Overall)

 1/  2 Bryce Harper OF
 2/ 12 Edwin Encarnacion 1B
 2/ 16 Yoenis Cespedes OF
 3/ 21 Scott Atchison RP
 3/ 22 AJ Griffin SP
 4/ 32 Yasmani Grandal C
 5/ 41 Jed Lowrie SS
 5/ 42 Wade Miley SP
 6/ 52 Pedro Alvarez 3B
 6/ 56 Willin Rosario C
 7/ 62 Chris Perez RP
 8/ 72 Emilio Bonifacio IF/OF
 9/ 82 Trevor Cahill SP
10/ 92 Mike Morse OF
11/102 Scott Diamond SP
12/112 Steve Delabar RP
13/122 Jacoby Ellsbury CF
14/132 Eric Hosmer 1B
15/142 Jerry Blevins RP

Wouldn’t it be nice if Ellsbury & Hosmer bounced back?

Here’s what last year’s draft-pick trades yielded:

• McCutchen to Syracuse, got Cespedes & Rosario.
• Alex Avila to Abilene, got Jed Lowrie.
• Betancourt to Tally, got Scott Atchison.

After installing Xcode, the Command Line Tools must be installed. This is done from the Downloads section of Xcode’s preferences.

Had to clear out the old ports.

Had to run sudo xcodebuild -license to accept an Xcode license.

Install gnuplot.

% sudo port install gnuplot

First, let’s consider the playoff structure in isolation. Assume that all playoff teams have equal strength. If that’s the case, then the chance of winning a game or a series is 50%, a coin flip. A division champ (C-Bay or Orlando) has to win two series, so they have to flip a coin twice and have it come up heads both times. That’s one chance in four, 25%. A team with a one-game showdown to get into the lower bracket (LBI or Manahawkin) has win four series. The chance of having heads come up four times in a row is only one in 16, 6.25%. The probabilities of the 2012 playoff teams winning the ABL Championship under these conditions are shown in the table below.

Now let’s look at team strength: how to measure it, and how to use it to determine the probability of winning a game and a series. Bill James applied some statistics to the question of how to measure the probability of one team beating another in one game. He called it log5, and it uses winning percentage to measure team strength. I’ll use the ABL regular-season winning percentages for this exercise.

The log5 method works for one game, but what about a best-of-five or best-of-seven series? Well, there are formulas for that too. So now we can use these formulas to calculate the probabilities of teams reaching the finals. Three pages of scratch paper later…

Quite a spread, isn’t it?

One more series of calculations (and three more sheets of paper) gives the ultimate probabilities of teams getting their name on the hardware in 2012.

A superior winning percentage sure indicates a big advantage in the playoffs. Of course, this is simply a cold calculation based on only the playoff structure and the teams’ winning percentages. Among the factors this calculation does not take into account are:

• Home-field advantage
• Changes in team strength due to trades & injuries
• Runs scored & runs allowed
• Picther/batter match-ups
• Strength of three-man rotations
• Sticks
• BFHes
• Loaded dice
• PEDs

On August 2 the Dayton Dragons fell to the Lansing Lugnuts 5-2. They’re working on consecutive sell-out #860 or something, but there were lots of empty seats.

Below is a view from the stands of Bowman Field on August 1st, as the Williamsport Crosscutters defeated the Aberdeen IronBirds 7-6. (Click to enlarge.)