While watching the White Sox / Orioles game tonight, I was pleased to see John Danks pick Brian Roberts off at first. I’ve noticed that Danks has improved at keeping runners at first. In his rookie season, baserunners were 91% successful (with 2 pick offs) and last year they were only 74% successful (with 6 pick offs). That’s nothing compared to Mark Buehrle.
A baserunner against Mark Buehrle has a better chance of being picked off then actually swiping a base. In his career, he has picked off 61 baserunners and only given up 36 stolen bases. That’s incredible. Even outside of Buehrle’s pick off move, only 41% of baserunners have been successful stealing. The league average is 73%.
I started wondering, what kind of an effect does this have? I’m going to break it down by adjusting WHIP. WHIP stands for Walks + Hits per Inning PItched. Essentially, WHIP looks at the number of baserunners per Inning (excluding errors). Buehrle’s pitched 1865.2 Innings, given up 1937 hits and 431 walks, so a 1.269 WHIP.
Among active players, a 1.269 career WHIP is the 21st among active players . That feels about right, he isn’t an Elite pitcher, but he is still very good. Now, what if we remove his Pickoffs (61) from his Walk+Hit total? That ends up with a WHIP of 1.236.
Does this make any difference? That adjustment moves him up to 15th. Now to be fair, I didn’t adjust all of the players in baseball, just Buehrle. Still, the guy he passes up (Brandon Webb) only has 8 career pickoffs, so Buehrle benefits from a change like this more than any other MLB pitcher.
Obviously, adjusting the WHIP like I did isn’t really a helpful exercise. WHIP does a good job of measuring baserunners per inning, so no adjustment is really needed. My point is that while Buehrle might lack the strikeout numbers of the elite pitchers, there is something to say about a guy who has pitched 8 straight seasons of 200+ IP and is excellent at neutralizing the opponents running game.
Fact!
Nice take, and nice site.
I think the value of Buehrle’s move would have been even greater a couple decades ago when the stolen base was a more prevalent weapon. But you are right. Although the baseball world is well aware of MB’s skill, it doesn’t usually get considered when ranking the top pitchers.
Baserunning as a whole is really ignored in baseball. It seems like only fantasy players care for it. I don’t want my team running into outs, but I know how different I feel about baserunners when Contreras is pitching compared to Buehlre.
Really enjoyed this piece! Buehrle is simply a great pitcher! He does all the little things better than any pitcher playing now. I almost enjoyed his one hitter better than his PG because he picked off Sammy Sosa! The recognition of these trait in pitchers is minmal. Fielding is also another facet which is not given the sheen that hitting does. The athletic precision of some plays made is pure poetry.