Harry P's take on Big Z's cutter

Here's Harry Pavlidis' take on the effectiveness of Carlos Zambrano's "abandoned" cutter. Bad news first: Per the rv100 and rv100E stats, it was Z's most effective pitch during the years examined. The good news is there may be more to the story, as I believe Harry's working on a follow-up article re: the cutter's effect on Z's control.

almost 2 years ago daver 4 comments 0 recs |

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and rv100 vs rv100E is?

since many here dont even know what rv100 is or how the two relate to one another, here is how they are defined, and i hope somone will explain them in better detail, as i cannot.

below was taken from the article to shed some light,

rv100 is based on actual batted ball outcomes (single, double etc) and rv100e is based on batted ball type (liner, fly etc). 0 is average, by definition, with negative numbers being better for the pitcher. rv100 means run value (defined by linear weights) per 100 pitches.

someone who knows more about this please explain it in better detail

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by Cubbie-Tim on Feb 20, 2010 3:43 PM CST reply actions

I had to read the article a couple times...

…to get the drift myself. I think the most important point is this:

negative numbers being better for the pitcher

In other words, the lower the rv100, the better. So as you can see from the chart at the bottom of the article, Z’s cutter earned the lowest rv100s across the board.

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by daver on Feb 20, 2010 4:10 PM CST up reply actions

Exactly

But I want to stress one important point – it’s all in context, how it was used in sequence etc etc. Still, the consistency says something, and he seems to consistently avoid being hit hard. But even the rv100e was top shelf.

Another key point – he has some good stuff.

by Harry Pavlidis on Feb 20, 2010 5:06 PM CST up reply actions

The methodology for rv100 is based on Joe P Sheehan's

as described here

http://baseballanalysts.com/archives/2008/02/writing_about_t.php

And this is how I explained rv100E to a friend recently:

rv100e is based on batted ball types (LD/GB/FB/PU) with all outcomes
regressed 100% to 3-year league averages. It assumes pitchers have no
control over what happens to a batted ball (including home runs) but
some/full control over what type of batted ball it is (both flawed
assumptions). A negative value indicates a pitcher who, given a
“normal” outcome on batted balls, would have allowed fewer runs than a
league average pitcher.

I hope that helps

by Harry Pavlidis on Feb 20, 2010 5:03 PM CST reply actions